


The Tale of the Black Freighter.

by steeleye



Series: After The First Won. [4]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Action/Adventure, F/F, Humour, Pirates, Sci-Fi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-01
Updated: 2020-03-17
Packaged: 2021-02-28 12:21:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 17
Words: 46,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22969909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/steeleye/pseuds/steeleye
Summary: Buffy sensed that now would be a good time to say something to ease the tension and get everyone's minds off their fear, “Follow me you apes,” she called, “do y'wanna live forever!?” Its all hands on deck when Pirate Witch Amy is on the prowl.
Series: After The First Won. [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1556119
Kudos: 2





	1. Chapter 1

The Tale of the Black Freighter.

By Steeleye.

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Buffy the Vampire Slayer; I write these stories for fun not profit.

 **Crossover:** Multiple xovers.

 **Spelling, Punctuation, and Grammar:** Written in glorious UK-English (the original and best) which is different to US-English.

 **Timeline:** This story continues from where 'Robo-Cook' leaves off.

 **Words:** Seventeen chapters of about 2500 words each.

 **Warnings:** There be pirates! AAAARRRR!

 **Summary:** Buffy sensed that now would be a good time to say something to ease the tension and get everyone's minds off their fear, “Follow me you apes,” she called, “do y'wanna live forever!?” Its all hands on deck when Pirate Witch Amy is on the prowl.

0=0=0=0

**Space, 3514CE.**

Lights flashed and warning sirens howled as the shuttle plunged wildly in its frantic attempts to evade the Alliance cruiser that was firing on her. Grabbing hold of a safety rail, Amy paused at the entrance to the flight deck.

“What the feck's goin' on!?” she demanded as she found herself being thrown against the bulkhead once again.

“That Ally cruiser!” Abigail Khan, the shuttle's pilot, replied as she wrestled with the controls.

“What Ally cruiser?” Amy asked as she threw herself into the counter measures operator's seat and strapped herself down.

“THAT ALLY CRUISER!” Abigail screamed as she pointed to the blip on the radar screen in the centre of her control panel.

“Oh _that_ Ally cruiser, you should've said,” Amy replied with infuriating calmness as she attempted to make sense of the unfamiliar controls; she'd only been a pirate for four or five months and all this future technology was still a bit of a mystery to her, “Right, lets see what we can do...”

As it turned out, what Amy could do was, 'very little'. There was no chaff in the chaff dispensers, the shuttle's jammers were laughably ineffective, they could stop a merchantman calling for help but against a military transmitter they were less than useless. Amy noted she had half a dozen homemade decoys but the Alliance cruiser's scanners would see though their deception in a nano-second. Add this to the fact that apart from one 20mm duel purpose Gatling gun the shuttle was unarmed while the cruiser had ship killer missiles, 30mm Gatlings plus a host of point defence.

“Well?” Abigail wanted to know what Amy was going to do.

“Right...” Amy looked at all the screens and readouts before taking a deep breath, “...it looks like we're all going to die...unless we surrender.”

“What!?” Abigail looked over her shoulder at Amy; as the pilot she was in command of the shuttle so whether to surrender or not would be up to her. “We'd only be thrown out of an airlock without a suit...Ally's hate pirates, think of something else.”

“Like what?” Amy snapped back, she was thrown against her restraints again as Abigail sent the shuttle on yet another set of wild evasive manoeuvres.

“You're a witch,” Abigail pointed out not untruthfully, “use magic or something!”

“But magic doesn't work in space,” Amy pointed out; actually magic did work in space, it was only when you directed it at something outside your spaceship that things went all screwy. 

“Look out they're firing again!” Abigail cried; luckily for her and Amy plus the rest of the crew the cruiser was shooting at someone else, actually it was shooting at several someones.

The shuttle had been part of a group of five that were trying to escape the cruiser after their failed attempt at stealing an Alliance 'battlewagon'. Everything had been going fine until some sort of robotic killing machine had started to slaughter the boarding party. Next the crew of a nearby Alliance cruiser had woken up, seen what was going on and had started shooting. Now it looked like their only hope of survival was to get back to their mothership, The Black Freighter. However, things appeared to be going from bad to worse. Amy watched as the cruiser sent streams of kinetic penetrators towards four of the five pirate shuttles.

As if in slow-motion the rounds hit their targets, some of which exploded while others simply spun out of control and headed off into deep space their crews either dead or condemned to a long, slow, agonising death as their air leaked slowly from their hulls. Looking on in horror, Amy thought of all those pirate girls who'd become her friends and comrades over the few months that she'd been with The Black Freighter, she imagined them dying as their ships were torn apart. The fact that the shuttles had a number of Alliance prisoners aboard and the cruiser had still fired told her that whoever was in command was one cold hearted bitch.

“If you've got any rabbits to pull out of hats I suggest you do it now,” Abigail said as she threw the shuttle across the sky.

“Do you even know what a rabbit is...?” Amy asked absently as a germ of an idea came to her.

“Its an Earth animal isn't it?” Abigail replied, “Feathers and webbed feet, goes quack...”

“That's a duck,” Amy informed the pilot; yes she told herself it might just work.

“A duck?” Abigail appeared to have resigned herself to the fact that they were all going to die in the next few minutes and was more concerned about what a rabbit was or wasn't; everyone had their own way of distracting themselves from almost certain death.

“Shut up an' let me think...” Amy told her firmly.

It was simple really; so magic didn't work if you cast the spell through a ship's hull, Amy suspected that some of the elements used in the construction of space craft somehow blocked magic.

“Enemy fire control has a lock on us,” Abigail indicated a number of red flashing lights on her control panel.”

But if the 'spell' was already outside the ship and directed at something that wasn't actually inside the target ship it might just work.

“They're gonna start firing any second now...” Abigail pointed out more calmly than she'd thought possible.

All Amy had to do was magically enhance those homemade decoys and 'POW!' they'd disappear and live to plunder another day. Closing her eyes Amy pictured the decoys in her mind's eye. The enhancement spell was fairly basic and would only take a few moments to cast. Opening her eyes again Amy smiled as she reached for the launch button.

“Done!” Amy's thumb pressed down on the button and a moment later she could feel six soft thumps as the decoys launched, “Decoys away!”

“Like that's going to help,” Abigail sulked.

“Wait and see,” Amy grinned, “in the mean time set a course for where the Freighter's supposed to be.”

“Whatever,” Abigail shrugged as she laid in a course that she didn't believe she'd ever have to use.

It was only after she'd laid in the new course that would take them home that Abigail looked at her radar screen. In a heartbeat she saw the streams of penetrators heading towards the eggshell thin hull of the shuttle and then she blinked. The bullet streams weren't heading for the shuttle, they'd come close but they'd miss. Turning in her seat, Abigail looked again at Amy with new found respect.

“Hey, you're good.”

“Yeah I know,” Amy didn't believe in false modestly, “but it won't last forever, now punch it!”

“Aye-Aye! Punching it!”

In the few seconds they'd been talking the Alliance cruiser had fired again, once more Amy's magic caused the streams of incoming rounds to veer off course by just enough to prevent them hitting the pirate shuttle. At least most of her rounds went wide. One, however, strayed from the course taken by its sister shells; perhaps the propellent mix that fired it down the barrel was off causing the shell to go off course, maybe it was immune to magic. Whatever the cause the lone shell sped towards the shuttle and punched right through her hull plating as if it was a hot, sharp, pointy thing going through a replicated, butter-like spread.

Aboard the shuttle a new set of alarms went off as the lone round made an entrance and exit hole in the shuttle's hull as well as going through several internal bulkheads. Atmosphere started to stream from the two holes as the shuttle increased speed towards its mothership, it also left its decoys behind when she changed course. Leaking air as the crew tried to patch the hull, the shuttle was only saved from certain destruction when a missile fired ten minutes before by The Freighter exploded near the cruiser damaging her hull, and sub-light engines. Unable to chase either of the pirate ships as they moved out of range, the Alliance captain decided not to risk her ship by conducting a stern chase with damaged engines, or a long range missile dual that she wasn't sure she could win.

Sitting back in her seat, Amy watched and listened as one by one all the warning lights stopped flashing and the emergency klaxons went silent. The hull breach had been sealed with emergency patches; they weren't going to die gasping for air or in a fireball as the shuttle exploded. Now she could rest for a while, perhaps get some painkillers from the first aid box for the splitting headache she had. Putting a hex on those decoys had taken more out of her than she'd expected. Time to rest, perchance to sleep and maybe dream.

0=0=0=0

Life, Amy's subconscious told her as she dozed, was a cold hearted bitch that got her jollies from screwing with people's lives. Her present situation had begun back in Sunnydale in 2003. After screwing with Willow Rosenberg one last time, Amy found that she'd left leaving town just a little too late. Her first clue that things had gone horribly, horribly wrong was when she came face to face with one of those Uber-vamp things that had been popping up all over good old Sunny-Hell. It'd been the work of a second to set the vile creature on fire and escape. But later, as she'd been packing her bags for her planned trip to the casinos of Las Vegas, Amy had glanced out of her window to see more of those spooky, blind, Bringer people that were going around stabbing people, particularly if the stabees were potential slayers.

Deciding that making her escape by bus was probably not a good idea, Amy had gone into her small living room and arranged her luggage around her feet. Taking a deep breath she'd cast the teleportation spell that should land her in the bus station in Las Vegas, only it didn't. A second or two later when she opened her eyes she found herself in a wood, which _so_ wasn't Las Vegas, she also found that her luggage hadn't come through with her either. Cursing herself for not being more careful, Amy theorised that perhaps she'd been a little more tired than she'd thought she was and she'd missed Las Vegas and had landed near by. Choosing a direction she'd started to walk. It hadn't taken very long before she began to think that she was nowhere near Las Vegas. What was worse she didn't want to risk using any more magic until she knew what had gone wrong with her teleportation spell.

Eventually, Amy discovered that she'd landed somewhere in the future, the year 2684 to be precise. This future world was almost entirely populated by women, the few men still alive were kept in cages and used only for breeding. The women here wore swords and carried bows and muskets to fight the demons that still roamed the land after The First had won its battle with Buffy Summers. On the plus side, Amy discovered that magic was now an accepted part of life and over the next few years she made a comfortable living as a wandering witch until she met up with a certain woman by the name of Nancy Burdette.

Riding her horse along a road which led to the small town of Sanmara, which coincidently was about twenty or thirty miles west of where Sunnydale used to be; Amy was stopped by a group of armed riders in the employ of a rich rancher called Nancy Burdette. At first the riders wanted to turn her back but when Burdette found out that Amy was a witch she offered her a small magicking job. Telling Amy a tale of an evil sheriff, who had a grudge against Burdette and her sister Jo, Burdette explained how the sheriff had framed her sister for a murder she'd not committed and was even now waiting to hang Jo Burdette as soon as the State Police Inspector and her Constables arrived in town. Nancy Burdette also offered Amy a lot of money to work for her.

Of course soon after arriving in Sanmara, Amy discovered the truth. Jo Burdette was a violent thug who'd murdered an unarmed ranch hand. The sheriff had arrested Jo and was holding her in jail waiting for her to be taken away and sent for trial. What was worse was that the so-called 'evil sheriff' was Buffy Summers who'd also found herself dragged through time and into the future. As it happened Amy had no real axe to grind with Buffy Summers, her problems had always been with Willow Rosenberg, yes she and Buffy had had their falling out, but, Buffy had saved Amy from her insane, body steeling mother. So, in Amy's book they were sort of even, another thing was that Amy had no intention of going up against two slayers (Buffy had a deputy who was also a slayer) and wanted out, but she'd taken Burdette's money and sort of felt obligated to at least try and free the rancher's sister.

By kidnapping one of Summers' helpers (another witch but one that was nowhere near as powerful as herself) Amy had arranged for a prisoner exchange. It had been working out too until Burdette had decided to double-cross Buffy. That's when everything turned to rat-shit, there'd been a lot of shooting some explosions and Amy had ended up having to kill Nancy Burdette with a magically induced heart attack. Standing there in the smoke and flames surrounded by dead and wounded fighters, Amy had tried to teleport herself to where she'd left two fast horses that she'd hoped would facilitate her escape. Just as she was about to cast her spell there was a terrific explosion and the next thing Amy knew was she was lying on the floor of what, she later found out to be, was the corridor on a starship. To add insult to injury, Amy later discovered that she was about a hundred light years away from Earth.

Life as a Pirate, because that's who the ship belonged to, wasn't so bad. Pirates it seemed to Amy had got a bad reputation over the centuries, at least that's what she thought from seeing the actions of the pirate band she'd 'joined'. They didn't kill their victims, okay yes they sold some of them into slavery but only occasionally were the prisoners sold to demons. Mostly ships and their crews and passengers were held for ransom, the money and goods paid for their release being paid through third parties. This limited the chances of the so-called Terran Alliance (this was the new world government so it had to be evil, right?) ever catching them.

Being a firm believer in the old saying, fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me, Amy didn't just let herself be taken in by the stories of injustice and oppression the pirates told her to justify why they were pirates. However, at the time Amy decided that she'd play along, after all she didn't really have much of a choice. But after a while she discovered there was an element of truth in what the pirates told her; yes some of them had been oppressed, some had lived lives of grinding poverty, others were just cut-throats who were out for a fast D’lah. 

Over the four or five months she'd been part of the pirate band, Amy had become pretty popular, in fact this was the first time in her life that she'd been this well-liked by so many people, she even had a steady girlfriend. Amy had found the transition from boys to girls pretty easy. Firstly her mother had never encouraged any interest in boys Amy might have had; she'd wanted her daughter to concentrate on her cheerleading. Then after Amy had gone to live with her dad, she'd been too busy with school work and magic to really get that involved with boys. Okay yeah, she'd gone out with a couple of guys from school but it was never that serious and the relationships had gone nowhere. It was then that she met Etta, the red-haired Senior Gun Captain on the Black Freighter. Etta was tall and slim and brave and beautiful and appeared to love Amy and Amy sorta loved her back, but she really wasn't that sure of her feelings towards the pirate girl. For a while back at the start of their relationship Amy had worried that she might be transferring some sort of secret desire for Willow Rosenberg to Etta, but apart from the red hair Etta was nothing like Rosenberg.

“Are we there yet?” Amy yawned as she woke up and found she was still sitting in the counter measures operator’s chair.

“Almost,” replied the pilot as she pointed at the view screen.

“Cool,” Amy smiled as she saw the comforting bulk of the Black Freighter loom up in front of the shuttle.

0=0=0=0


	2. Chapter 2

_My mama told me I should never venture into space,  
But I did, I did, I did.   
She said no Terran girl could trust the Martian race,   
But I did, I did, I did.   
A rocket pilot asked me on a voyage to go,   
And I was so romantic, I couldn't say no,   
That she was just a servo robot how was I to know?   
So I did, I did, I did._

High light and right click on the link below to hear and see a video of Imagined Village's 'Space Girl':

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-y8BjwzJSo

0=0=0=0

**The Terran Alliance Star Ship, Reluctant.**

“I totally feel like a fraud,” Willow told Chief of the Ship, Faith Lehane as she looked down at her chest where her brand new 'Distinguished Service Medal' hung.

“Hey,” Faith grinned back at Willow her own newly awarded Star Force Cross pinned to her uniform jacket, “you did good, L-t.”

Lieutenant Willow Rosenberg, Science Officer aboard the TASS Reluctant had won her medal for captaining her ship and its much reduced crew against a greatly superior pirate ship. The pirate had been attempting to steal the Terran battleship, TASS Indomitable, with the aid of a turncoat Star Force admiral. During the action the Reluctant had destroyed four pirate shuttles with at least fifty pirates aboard and fought off a large, heavily armed pirate mothership.

“Its not like I did anything brave, not like Buffy,” Willow complained.

Ship's cook, Leading Crew Woman Buffy Summers had been aboard the Indomitable when the pirates had attacked and killed the battleship's skeleton crew before trying to steal her. Of course she wasn't the real Buffy Summers, the real Buffy had died hundreds of years ago. This Buffy was a very advanced ex-sex-bot that Willow had reprogrammed to think she _was_ Buffy. But, because the Buffy-bot thought she _was_ Buffy she'd acted like the real Buffy would have and had fought off the pirate boarding party almost single handedly and in the process she'd been seriously damaged.

As a result of Buffy's actions the pirates had been forced to abandon their attempt at 'grand theft battleship' and had boarded their shuttles in an effort to escape only to be destroyed by the Reluctant's guns. Today Buffy had received her Conspicuous Gallantry Medal and an advancement of one grade in rank, she was now Petty Officer Class Two, Buffy Summers. Some mean spirited people in the Star Force hierarchy had objected to Buffy being awarded her medal. They claimed that as Buffy had been programmed to be brave she shouldn't get a medal for simply following her programming. Other people had pointed out that Buffy was more than just a machine and told the first group where they could stuff their stupid opinions.

However, the entire medal situation had brought up other arguments about whether Buffy was sentient, or even a new type of life form or whether she was 'just' a machine. Even as the award ceremony was happening in the small dinning area aboard the Reluctant a working group was being formed back on Earth to determine whether Buffy was a machine or a new kind of lifeform. Willow who'd started this ball rolling simply because she wanted her old friend back was now panicking over what she'd begun. Originally the fact that the Buffy-bot existed was supposed to be a secret; now, with the medal, everyone seemed to know that Buffy wasn't exactly one-hundred percent, human.

“Listen up people,” Lieutenant Commander Adams, Captain of the Reluctant climbed up onto a chair so she could address the crew, “we can celebrate the good fortune of our shipmates for a few more hours, but remember tomorrow we boost out of the Alor system in company with the Indomitable to track down that pirate and destroy her, so...” Captain Adams smiled indulgently at her crew, “so...don't get too drunk. You really don't want to have a hangover when we go into FTL tomorrow.”

This advice was greeted by laughter from the crew as the captain climbed down from her chair and made her way back to her cabin. It was traditional for the senior ship's officers to leave these sorts of celebrations early so the crew could enjoy themselves.

It had been nearly two months since the incident and the Reluctant had had the damage she'd received in the fight with the pirate repaired; she'd also received a few updates to her systems. At the same time the Indomitable had received replacements for the officers and crew killed in the pirate attack and had also had her damaged systems repaired. After two months Captain Adams knew that the only chance they had of finding the pirate was if it attacked somewhere else and the two Star Force ships were nearby and able to intercept. It was a near impossible task but Adams would do her best.

0=0=0=0

**At about the same time aboard the TASS Red Witch.**

“Like, feckin' pirates,” Dawn grumbled as she shifted her position in an attempt to get comfortable, “totally feckin' stupid, feckin' pirate feckin' suppression feckin’ duties,” she added, “we should be out there totally feckin' killing feckin' Shedu, not suppressing stupid feckin' pirates...”

“I'm guessing you're not a happy Marine,” Marine First Class Kat Griffith smiled out of her open helmet as she shifted her Light Assault Gun to somewhere where people wouldn't trip over it.

“Too freakin' right, I'm not feckin' happy!” Dawn turned to face her Lag-gunner, “Like sitting for feckin' eight on sixteen off, day in, day feckin' out, is not what I joined the feckin' Marines to do, right?”

“No you joined to fight for freedom, self determination and the Terran way,” Kat smiled at her section leader.

“Feckin' totally, straight feckin' A-feckin'-one, I did,” Dawn replied her face cracking into a smile.

“Look at it this way,” Kat continued, “in another...” she checked her chronometer, “...one hour and twenty-three minutes and seventeen seconds...not that I'm counting of course, we'll be able to get out of these fancy torture suits and have a real hot water shower.”

Dawn had been in this world of the future for just over six years and had been a Marine in the Terran Alliance Marine Corps for four of those years. Six years ago, or about one-thousand-five-hundred-and-eleven years ago, it depended on how you looked at things, Xander and herself had been trying to escape from Sunnydale after The First had killed her sister and broken out of the caverns under Sunnydale High School. The road west out of town had opened up in front of them and the pick-up truck they'd so recently stolen had crashed nose first into the sink-hole. The only thing Dawn really remembered was the darkness and a feeling like she was falling a very long way. Expecting to be dead, Dawn was very surprised when she woke up near a road and was picked up by a couple of female cops who drove her to hospital...in a police car that floated a foot above the road!

The rest, as they say was history, after leaving hospital she was sent to live with a married couple (both women) who had experience with 'troubled teens'; Dawn had been designated a 'troubled teen' by the local child services because; she spoke archaic English, didn't seem to remember anything from before she'd been picked up by the police and appeared to have been abused. After finishing high school, Dawn had got a job selling dresses in a small shop until she got bored and joined the Marines. After four years in the Marine Corps she'd had her unit totally destroyed once and had fought in numerous actions against the demon-like Shedu. The Terran Alliance and the Shedu Confederation had been at war for nearly two-and-a-half years now. As a result of the war and its casualties, Dawn was now a full corporal in command of her own section of eight Marines.

Dawn's platoon was at present aboard the Terran Alliance Star Ship 'Red Witch'; Dawn had discovered that the Red Witch had been named for her old friend Willow Rosenberg; in fact it had come as something of a shock to Dawn that herself, her sister and all their friends were looked on as some sort of tragic-heroic figures from the past with starships named after them and totally inaccurate movies made about them...the actress who'd played Buffy in the last movie Dawn had seen (a girl called Stella Stardust) had been totally way off, she'd not even got Buffy's hair colour right!

The Red Witch hadn't started life as a warship, she'd been built as a five-thousand-ton cargo liner. Capable of carrying five-thousand tons of cargo and ninety paying passengers. The Red Witch was the perfect vessel to be converted into a 'Q' ship to hunt down pirates. Because space is so big it was near impossible to track down individual pirate ships; you could, but it would take years. Star Force command had decided it would be easier to get the pirates to come to them to be destroyed. The average 'Q' ship looked like a merchant-ship, if you scanned it, all its emissions would tell you it was a merchant-ship loaded down with valuable cargo...until you docked with it to steal that valuable cargo. Then the Red Witch and the vessels like her would reveal her hidden weapons and blow the pirate's engines to the Hellmouth and back, while her Marine contingent ripped through the pirate ship killing any crew that they met. Any surviving pirates unfortunate enough to survive this attack would then be Court Marshalled before either being sentenced to life imprisonment on a penal colony or being 'spaced'.

The Terran Alliance had a zero tolerance policy towards pirates. Apart from the damage piracy did to interstellar trade it took valuable resources away from the war against the Shedu. This was why Dawn's unit was three weeks into a six month tour of pirate suppression duties. So far they'd not seen even one pirate row boat let alone a pirate ship, but that was about to change.

Looking forward to getting out of her power armour suit, Dawn fidgeted in a forlorn attempt to work the kinks out of her back. Power armour was a fine invention, you could live inside it for up to three days and it would protect you from most of what angry people and things could throw at you. However, it had not been designed with the idea of the wearer sitting more or less motionless for eight hours at a time. Because it took about twenty minutes to put on a suit of armour, one section of the platoon's three sections had to be wearing their armour as a pirate could be on them within minutes of spotting the seemingly defenceless merchant-ship.

“Okay, guys,” Dawn looked at her chronometer as she spoke to her section some time later, “we're out of here in...twenty minutes. Billie,” Dawn turned to her lance-corporal second in command, “you make sure all the weapons and ammo get back to armoury, I'll deal with shutting down the suits. The rest of you make sure all your gear is squared away before you shower and go for something to eat...and this time when I say...”

It was about then that the alarms went off.

“Feck-it!” Dawn cursed as the long hoped for idea of a shower and being free from her armoured prison receded into the future. “This better be for feckin' real...” she listened to the information coming from her comms unit before speaking again, “Okay, get on the ready line Marines, this _is_ for real!”

Standing up Dawn took her M-Tar assault rifle from its place on her back, she checked the weapon before fitting a fifty round magazine. As she worked information was relayed to her by her Platoon Leader up on the bridge.

“Okay this is what we've got,” Dawn announced, “looks like a pirate snuck up on us under heavy ECM, she fired a missile that exploded in front of us and now she's going to board via the main airlock. We're to give them a warm reception, roger that so far?”

“ROGER THAT!” yelled her Marines with varying degrees of enthusiasm.

“Okay Marines lets move it!” Dawn ordered as she led the way towards the main airlock.

The pirates had a problem. Most merchant-ships were lightly armed and not very fast so they were easy enough to catch once you'd found one, which wasn't that difficult because most merchant-ships followed the same routes between planets. The easiest way of stopping a merchant was to fire a missile and destroy its engines. But a lot of a pirate's profit came from selling the ship, or holding it for ransom. The ship's value would be seriously reduced with large holes blown in its engineering spaces. Also there was a chance that you might blow the entire ship to very small pieces of space dust thus completely ruining your profit margins. No, the most profitable way of stopping a merchant-ship was to 'fire a shot across her bows' and once the merchant had 'stopped', dock with her and board her. This was what the pirate was trying to do right now, however things were unlikely to go the pirate's way, not with Dawn and her section waiting to greet them.

“Okay girls,” Dawn called over the section squawk-net, “no one fires until I give the word. The first pirates through that airlock will probably be in hard suits...”

Hard suits were a type of unpowered armour. Body armour was relatively easy to make; the suits that the pirates would be wearing had probably been made by adding ballistic armour to a normal vacuum suit. As a hard suit was unpowered and heavy the wearer would get tired quickly and wouldn't be anywhere near as combat effective as a woman in a real power armoured suit. However, against crew-women wearing only body armour or ordinary vacuum suits they were almost as effective as power armour.

“..so I want you Lag gunners up front,” Dawn explained, “When I give the word go to full auto and blast those feckers back into space!”

“Roger that!” replied Dawn's two gunners.

“Oh, I almost totally forgot,” Dawn smiled in the privacy of her helmet, “the ship's witch has cast a 'don't notice me' spell over us. With just a little luck those feckin' pirate bitches won't notice us until we totally open up on 'em...”

There was an ironic cheer from Dawn's section, magic in space was notoriously and wildly ineffective. But, as the spell had been cast from within the ship on something that was also within the hull of the ship it should work. It was really only when you tried ship-to-ship magic that things got interesting. 

“Okay girls wait for my word,” Dawn knelt down near the bulkhead wall of the corridor leading to the main airlock and placed the aiming pipper of her rifle on the inside surface of the door to the airlock. 

Her platoon leader, Miz Moore was feeding her information about what was going on which Dawn then passed on to her section. Having not even tried to run, the merchant captain had apparently surrendered and had opened the outer doors to the Red Witch's main airlock. With no apparent hesitation, the pirate took the bait and docked. This had all taken about ten minutes, the pirate had almost been on top of them when she'd revealed herself; Dawn suspected that the Red Witch's techies would want a good long look at that pirate's ECM suite.

A light flashed redly above the door to the airlock indicated that the outer door was open, as Dawn watched, the red light changed to green, any moment now the inner door would open.

“Okay,” Dawn said calmly into her comms, “the L-t says there's about a dozen pirates all in hard suits in the airlock, they'll be through in...”

Before Dawn could finish what she was saying the inner doors slid open and the lead pirate assault wave burst out into the corridor, as they'd been ordered none of Dawn's Marines fired. As far as the pirates could see the corridors ahead of them were empty, which made them suspicious. Normally they could expect to be met by the ship's captain holding a copy of the ship's cargo manifest. Most pirates weren't into death and mayhem there was no profit in dead bodies and destroyed ships. So, not seeing a welcoming committee made them slow down and become cautious. Weapons were raised as the boarding party started to try and spread out in the relatively narrow confines of the corridors.

“Lag gunners,” Dawn found herself whispering even though the pirates couldn't possibly hear her, “on my word...” Dawn waited for the door behind the pirates to slide shut as the airlock cycled through its sequence to let more pirates aboard, “...FIRE!”

0=0=0=0


	3. Chapter 3

_With cutlass and gun,  
We fought for hours three;  
Blow high! Blow low! And so sailed we.  
The ship it was their coffin  
And their grave it was the sea.  
Down along the coast of the High Barbary._

Highlight and right click to hear, 'The High Barbary'.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lqti-G28egc

0=0=0=0

**TASS Red Witch.**

Feeling more than hearing the reports from her two Lag-gunner's weapons, Dawn watched as the heavy rounds punched through the pirate's armour before exploding inside their bodies. The pirates hit by a storm of 12.5mm bullets were in some cases literally blown apart. After about half the pirates were shot down, either killed or wounded, the survivors recovered from their initial shock and returned fire as the Marine gunners swapped their magazines.

“DOWN!” Dawn cried as a hail of automatic fire was sent in her direction.

The lighter 7mm bullets used in the personal weapons of both Marines and pirates weren't near heavy enough to penetrate the breast plate or helmet of a powered suit but hits to other parts of the suit might result in penetrations that could prove fatal for the wearer as the bullet would bounce around inside the armour cutting the wearer into roughly butchered dog-meat!

Hearing a couple of impacts on the top of her helmet as she hunkered down and waited for the pirate return fire to slacken off, Dawn awaited her chance to hit back. As soon as her well honed combat instincts told her it was safe, she looked up and brought her M-Tar rifle to bear. Directing a long burst at a pirate who appeared to be an officer or NCO; the pirate had better armour and weapons than her sisters, Dawn watched as her rounds hit home punching through the armour protecting the pirate's legs and knocking her off her feet. Seeing her target go down, Dawn raked her victim with another burst of fire before ejecting her spent magazine and fitting a full one.

“FOLLOW ME!” Dawn yelled over the squawk-net as she led her section along the passageway and towards the airlock.

As she ran forward at the head of her Marines, Dawn sensed the pirate rounds fly past her body and head, some part of her registered one of her own people go down and slide to a halt along the blood slick surface of the corridor. However, before she could order a pick-up, Dawn found herself fully engage with the three or four pirates who were still standing after the initial firefight. Too close now to use their firearms for fear of hitting one of their own, the Marines struck out with armoured hands and feet. Using the butt of her rifle, Dawn smashed in the face plate of a pirate that was trying to stab her with a short bladed sword. The woman dropped her weapon as her hands went instinctively to her ruined face. Kicking the pirate's legs out from under her, Dawn finished her off with a five round burst through the woman's smashed visor.

Almost as soon as the last pirate went down the airlock doors opened again and Dawn found herself confronted by an airlock chamber packed with more heavily armed pirates. Letting her training take over, she opened fire on the pirate reinforcements. The enemy might have been well armed, but they were crowded into the airlock in such a way as to prevent them from using their weapons effectively, obviously they'd not expected to meet determined resistance so close to the airlock. Firing a controlled burst of twenty-five rounds, Dawn watched as her bullets penetrated the less effective body armour that the pirates of the second wave were wearing. Blood squirted from wounds as Dawn's rounds found their targets and pirates fell to form a carpet of writhing bodies on the deck. Out of the corner of her eye, Dawn saw her Lag-gunner, Kat Griffith come to stand next to her.

Even in her armour the shock of the Lag going off right next to her made Dawn flinch. The effect of the big rounds on the packed bodies of the pirates was devastating. The powerful Lag rounds would sometimes pass through two or three pirates before exploding against the outer airlock door. Eventually one of the rounds fired by either Kat or Jazmin, the second team Lag-gunner, penetrated the airlock door and the Red Witch started to lose atmosphere. This didn't worry Dawn, one of the modifications to the Red Witch was the instillation of more airlocks around the main airlock. Effectively this meant that this entire section could be opened to vacuum without affecting the rest of the ship.

“Billie!” Dawn called to her second in command as the last few pirates were shot down and she pointed to the door, “Run a by-pass and get that door open asap! Who was hit?”

“Jenna,” the reply came from Marine First Class Rei Alvarez, “she's still alive an' I sent her back to get patched up.”

“Good,” Dawn would have nodded but no one would have noticed the gesture, “as soon as Billie gets the doors open we're gonna hit these space lice with everything we've got, roger that so far?”

“ROGER!” replied the section, there was, however, one voice raised in protest.

“Shouldn't we at least give them a chance to surrender?” Laura Cross, the most junior Marine in Dawn's section asked.

“For feck's sake why?” Dawn turned on the young Marine as she wondered, and not for the first time, why the girl had joined-up in the first place; the youngster was turning into a proficient Marine but she didn't seem to have that killer instinct which would help make her a truly _great_ Marine.

“Well...” Cross hesitated for a moment before replying, “...perhaps they didn't mean to be pirates.”

“Didn't _mean_ to be pirates!?” Dawn gasped in surprise; she'd heard people say some stupid things in her life but this had to be pretty near the top of the list. “Of course they meant to be fecking pirates and you shoot pirates, understand?”

“Yes Corporal,” Laura replied sullenly.

“Nearly there, Dawnie,” Billie stood by the door controls of the airlock having punched in the override codes and done a little non-standard cross wiring.

“Okay...” Dawn turned to look for the Marine she wanted, “...Chloe, you got your breaching charge?”

“Sure have,” if Chloe hadn't had her face plate closed her buddies would have seen her grinning like a rather blood thirsty twelve year old schoolgirl.

“Okay,” Dawn quickly reviewed what she was about to do in her mind before speaking again, “Lag-gunners you give Chloe covering fire while she sets the charge. Once the airlock's blown we go in hard an' don't stop until we get to engineering, roger that so far?”

“ROGER!”

“Okay,” Dawn shifted her weapon to cover the air-lock as her team-mates took up firing positions ready to blast anything that might come through the door, “the L-t's right behind us with the rest of the platoon, but our job is to secure their engineering spaces asap, so get on the ready line Marines...” Dawn glanced at Billie before giving her the signal to open the doors.

The heavy outer doors slid open in the blink of an eye (the result of some of Billie's non-regulation rewiring). The sight that greeted Dawn's eyes as she stepped out to support her two Lag-gunners gave her pause as it did to everyone else in the chamber. The two ships were connected by a semi flexible trunking about twelve feet in diameter. It appeared to Dawn that the trunking was filled floor to ceiling with pirates carrying weapons and tools to help them strip the Red Witch of her valuables. The sudden appearance of armed and armoured opponents had brought the pirate advance to a premature halt. Both sides stared at each other in surprise as long, seconds slowly ticked by.

“What the feck?” Dawn breathed as she began to wonder just how many pirates there were aboard the raider, but stopped as a request from her L-t for information reminded her of why she was here. “FIRE! FIRE! OPEN FIRE!” Dawn yelled into her comms just before she squeezed the trigger of her own weapon.

Her first burst stitched its may across the chest of one of the lead pirates. The woman had been wearing ballistic armour over her torso, but it was no defence against Dawn's high velocity armour piercing rounds. The pirate stumbled back onto one of her comrades before crashing to the deck of the trunking. Within half a second of Dawn firing her Lag-gunners opened up as did the rest of her section. Within five seconds the trunking looked like a slaughter house with wounded and dead pirates all mixed in together. Not all of the Marine's rounds hit the pirates of course, and some that did just kept on going until they either hit the hull of the pirate ship or ripped holes in the wall of the trunking. Air started to leak from the tube connecting the two ships those pirates still capable of movement started to scramble for the supposed safety of their ship.

“MOVE IT! MOVE IT!” Dawn screamed as she led the way across the trunking, over the dead and dying pirates and into the raider's airlock. “BILLIE!” Dawn pointed to what looked like an emergency override control, “Get those doors open before their captain thinks of breaking away.” 

If the pirate captain realised what was happening, which she probably would in the next few seconds, she'd sheer off and make her escape even if it meant losing all the crew she'd sent to capture the Red Witch. The pirate boarding party caught between the guns of the Terran Marines and a slow agonising death from being exposed to vacuum chose the quick way out and threw themselves onto the Marine's guns. The pirates were shot down like the scurvy-space-dogs they were, however the Marines were merciful enough to shoot the pirate wounded before they suffocated.

Once again, Billie worked her magic on the inner doors so Chloe didn't have to use her breaching charge. This time Dawn and her sister Marines were met by less than a dozen pirate crew who were standing around little wheeled carts ready to transfer valuables from the Red Witch to the raider. Tossing a grenade into the middle of the pirates, Dawn hunkered down as she heard shrapnel bounce off her armour. When she looked up again she saw that half the pirates were either dead or dying while the survivors tried to make it to the next pressure door before this section of the ship was sealed off. Dawn brought down the last few pirates with a couple of short bursts of automatic fire. The running pirates fell or ran on to crash into the bulkheads as Dawn's rounds took them in the back.

“Billie,” Dawn turned to her second in command again as the rest of her Marines took up covering positions in the corridor, “secure the airlock, deal with the wounded and wait for the L-t, roger that so far?”

“Roger,” Billie replied with a power armoured nod.

“When the L-t gets here follow me down to Engineering,”

“Got it,” Billie confirmed, “wait for the L-t then find you in engineering, roger that.”

“Okay first team,” Dawn held up her left arm so her Marines could see where she was, “FOLLOW ME!”

At some point between Dawn and her girl marines leaving to find the pirate's engineering spaces and Lt Moore turning up with the rest of the platoon, the pirate captain blew her own brains out leaving it to her first officer to surrender the ship.

0=0=0=0

_For quarter! For quarter!  
The saucy pirates cried,  
Blow high! Blow low! And so sailed we.  
The quarter that we showed them  
Was we sank them in the sea.  
Cruisin' down the coast of the High Barbary._

The Coast of High Barbary; Traditional.

“So what happens know?” Marine Laura Cross asked as she and Dawn watched the few remaining pirates being led to the cells aboard the Red Witch.

“The usual,” Dawn replied as a group of children passed by towards the airlock their hands on their heads.

“What even the children!?” Laura cried in astonishment; as the leaks allowing the atmosphere to escape had been sprayed with emergency sealant the two Marines were talking with their visors open.

“No,” Dawn replied sharply, the idea that the Marine Corps would sanction the death of minors even if their mothers _were_ pirates hurt her Marine pride, “the kids will be sent for re-education and then fostered out to good homes...there mothers however...”

“They'll be tossed out of an airlock or sent to a slave colony...”

“Only after a fair trial,” Dawn explained, “and were do you get all this stuff about slave colonies? Those who aren't found guilty will be sent to a penal colony and re-educated.”

If she was honest with herself, Dawn knew that most of the pirate prisoners would be 'spaced'. The mere fact that they were taken in arms aboard a pirate vessel spoke to their guilt. Some of the younger pirates would be spared, particularly those who'd taken no real part in any raiding. These were usually the cooks, medical staff, engineers and any pirate non-combatants that were found aboard the raider. Alliance doctrine said that piracy had to be stamped out and the best way of doing that was to kill any pirates you might find and destroy their ships. Piracy was bad for trade and trade was what held the Alliance together; piracy also caused much needed ships and troops to be redirected from the Shedu threat. So, however distasteful it was, all pirates had to die.

0=0=0=0

“I suppose you're so very feckin' proud of y'self?” the pirate asked as Dawn stood guard over a group of prisoners waiting to be herded into the airlock and spaced.

It was a couple of days after the Red Witch had taken the raider. The guilty and the not so guilty pirates had been separated after they'd all been given a scrupulously fair court marshal. Now the pirates who were marked for death were waiting for sentence to be carried out.

“You Ally bitches are so feckin' righteous standin' there in ya armour thinkin' ya so much better than us poor pirate girls.”

Dawn glanced at the pirate, she was hardly a 'girl', she had to be in her mid-thirties at least.

“Ya no feckin' better than me or any of my sisters,” the pirate continued, she didn't seem to care if Dawn was listening or not, “we were only tryin' to survive...what else could we feckin' do, huh?”

Once again, Dawn said nothing although she did consider closing her visor, but that would be a small victory for the pirate giving her the impression that Dawn couldn't refute her argument.

“Stuck on an feckin' asteroid mine with the feckin' company charging us all our wages for the feckin' air we breathed an' the food we ate,” the pirate explained, “What was I supposed to feckin' do, eh? I had two kids to feed, tell me what was I supposed feckin' to do, huh?”

Dawn almost spoke to deny that things like that happened in the Alliance, that the pirate was lying, but she didn't. Instead she took a firmer grip on her rifle and looked straight ahead, it was nearly time to open the airlock doors.

“My kids,” the pirate seemed to realise that anything she said wouldn't make any difference so she changed tack, “they were aboard the Star Chaser are they okay are they alive?”

Dawn knew that about two dozen young teen and preteen girls had been found aboard the pirate ship, they were all daughters of members of the crew.

“Hannah and Isabella,” the pirate looked into Dawn's impassive face as tears started to trickle down her own face, “please...” she sniffed, “...tell me they're okay.”

“What do they look like?” Dawn whispered out of the corner of her mouth.

“Here,” the pirate held up a dog-eared two dimensional photograph showing the pirate woman and her two children, the woman pointed to the older of the two girls, “that's Isabella she always wanted to be a pirate like her old mum...”

“Yeah, I've seen them,” Dawn replied; she'd seen the girls down in the cells where they'd be kept until the Red Witch docked at an Alliance base, “they're okay...they're fine. They'll be safe they'll go to good homes where people will love them and...”

“To slave worlds more like...” the pirate was interrupted as one of the Red Witch's officers' called for silence and everything went deathly quiet.

"Officers and crew of the pirate ship, Star Chaser,” began the officer looking over the top of her half moon spectacles as she read from a piece of paper, “you have been found guilty of the charges brought by this special courts marshal,” the officer paused for a moment; Dawn recognised the woman as the Red Witch's Second Officer “and it is now my duty to pass sentence. You have all been found guilty of the heinous crime of piracy. You are all habitual criminals, who accepted the possibility of arrest and death as an occupational hazard. We are therefore constrained to commit you to the maximum penalty allowed for these offences; you are therefore sentenced to death by vacuum...” once again the officer paused, “...does anyone wish to make a statement before sentence is carried out?”

“We die free not slaves like you Ally bitches!” called a pirate from the centre of the group of prisoners.

“Very well,” the officer continued when no one else seemed inclined to say anything, “Marines...do your duty.”

0=0=0=0


	4. Chapter 4

**Aboard the Black Freighter.**

Walking next to Etta, Amy wondered why Captain Flanagan had called this meeting of all her senior officers. It couldn't be about the failure of their attempt to capture the Indomitable; that had been weeks ago. The misfortune that had resulted in the deaths of over a hundred pirates and the loss of four shuttles had been put down to bad luck; the turncoat Terran Admiral had been spaced after Amy had stripped her mind of any useful information. She'd found no real evidence that the Terran woman had been a double agent; in fact when Amy had been rooting through the woman's mind she'd seen that the Terran had been sincere in her wish to join the pirates. But someone had to pay for the failure, plus you could never be certain that the woman hadn't been under some sort of spell, enchantment or programming to betray the pirates at some later date. As a result after being interrogated, she'd been tossed out of an airlock in a leaky old space suit.

The loses in crew, mostly fighters, had been made up as soon as 'The Freighter' had put into a pirate port. There were always impoverished women who were desperate to make some quick cash. The recruiters that the captain had sent out had filled their quota’s within a couple of days of The Freighter docking. Of course the new crew, who'd form any boarding or raiding parties, weren't as well trained or equipped as the women killed during the battle on or around the Indomitable, but that would soon change once they'd carried out a few raids and boarded a few fat merchant ships.

On the plus side, the new missile guidance systems made by Engineering Officer Lehmann had been a great success. Not even the Alliance had missiles that could evade anti-missile missiles. Of course the system wasn't perfect, but once again after a few more combat situations the new missiles would have a better that seventy-five percent chance of avoiding any anti-missile missile sent against them; the Alliance would be in for a big surprise when that happened. Also there were Amy's enhanced decoy packages. There was a severe shortage of high tech decoy systems on pirate held worlds, so any method of improving the rather primitive systems available were eagerly employed. Amy had spent a couple of weeks researching spell books until she was able to fit each decoy with a charm that once activated would improve the decoys efficiency by fifty percent, however the increased power drain on the decoy reduced its 'life' by half and, of course, the decoy's charms would need a witch to activate them. However, none of this answered the question of why the Captain had called this meeting.

The Captain's ready room, where Amy, Etta and all the other ship's officers waited, had once been the officer's ward room when The Freighter had been employed on more peaceful duties as a colony ship. There was a large, real, wood conference table surrounded by comfortable synthi-leather chairs. There were two large viewscreens on the walls plus a holo-projector along with a host of other communications devices. The room quickly filled up with officers; First Officer Hayworth, Engineer Lehmann, Navigator Tanabe, Communications Officer Davies, Quartermistress Santiago, Combat Leader Saxena plus half a dozen more junior officers as well as Etta who was The Freighter's Senior Gun Captain and Amy the ship's witch. No sooner had everyone got themselves sorted out and seated than Captain Flanagan came in through the door from her private quarters and everyone stood up again.

“Sit down, Ladies,” Captain Flanagan gestured with her hand to the seats around the table as once again the officers wondered what was going on; it had to be something very important which meant that there would probably need to be a vote.

Just because Captain Flanagan was the Captain, she couldn't simply tell everyone what to do, this wasn't the Alliance Star Force. Normally the officers and crew would obey orders pertaining to the actual running of the ship or when they were in combat without argument, but, anything that might be considered to be putting the lives of the crew in unnecessary danger or risking the destruction of the ship needed to be voted on before hand.

Once her officers were seated again, Captain Flanagan watched their faces for a moment trying to gauge their mood; she was a tall, slim woman in her late thirties with short dark brown hair and sharp features. The failed attack on the Indomitable had shaken the crew's self-confidence, but the Captain was sure that once they'd heard her new plan they'd embrace it with, if not joy, then at least with something approaching confidence.

“It pains me to have to announce the destruction of Captain McQuillen's ship, Star Chaser with the lose of all her crew to an Alliance Q-Ship,” the Captain sighed sadly, “I received this news a few days ago but held it back until I'd considered what our response should be to the Alliance's actions...”

“Our response?” Navigator Tanabe asked, “Our response should be to get out of this area of space double quick!”

“That is one option,” agreed the Captain with a nod, “but I'd been thinking of something more forceful...”

“We hit back at them?” Etta asked.

“Something like that,” agreed the Captain.

“I feel it my duty to remind the Captain,” Etta announced formally, “that even with our new decoys,” she gestured to Amy, “and missiles,” she nodded towards Engineer Lehmann, “we're no real match for even an Alliance cruiser, we only got away from Alor because that Ally cruiser wasn't at action stations when the fight began.”

“True,” nodded the captain, “which is why I intend not to pick a fight with any Ally warships.”

“So what do you want us to do?” Amy asked, she normally didn't say much at these meetings but the question needed to be asked.

“I intend for us to raid and destroy Porto Bello on Andersworld...”

“WHAT!?” cried the officers in unison.

“You can't be feckin’ serious!” First Officer Hayworth pointed out.

“You're talking about a defended Alliance base and trading centre aren't you Captain?” Etta asked.

After only spending six months in this future, even Amy knew that to attack Porto Bello could well be an interesting way of committing suicide.

“I'll be totally packing my bags,” Amy announced as she stood up, “you can drop me off at the first inhabited planet we pass.”

“There's no need for you to pack and leave us Miz Madison,” the Captain chuckled once something approaching calm had returned to the room, “in fact you're an important factor in my plan...”

“I am?” Amy stood behind her chair eyeing the doorway to the corridor, she didn't like the idea of being 'an important factor' in anyone's plans, being an 'important factor' could get you killed.

“Indeed you are,” agreed the Captain, “now if everyone would just sit down again and I'll explain...” and so the captain did.

0=0=0=0

**The Painted Lady, Carson City, HG-6921-6-B.**

Lying back on the pillows, Dawn gave a long satisfied sigh as she savoured the afterglow of her last climax. The Red Witch had put into Carson City (the only populated spot on an otherwise uninhabited airless asteroid) for repairs and resupply. It also meant that while the dock-techs were crawling over the ship, her crew and Marines could have a few days shore leave. Being a red blooded Marine with perfectly natural 'needs', Dawn had led her section into the more boisterous part of Carson City determined to have a good time.

Having grown up in a time when a girl was expected to find her 'needs' filled by boys, Dawn had been worried that she would never be able to make the switch to girls. But, as she'd not exactly had very much experience with boys; after the incident of her first real kiss...with a vampire, Buffy had sort of kept her on a short leash where boys were concerned. In fact Dawn had perfected her kissing technique with her two best friends Lisa and Janice, so when she found herself in a time when the only romantic partners available were other girls she wasn't unfamiliar with the concept of girl on girl kissing. Also there'd been the example set by Willow and Tara and later after Tara had been killed there was Willow and Kennedy. Having seen two girl-girl relationships at first hand Dawn thought she could deal.

Of course it hadn't worked out quite as well as she had hoped. During high school she'd had a couple of 'girlfriends', but the relationships had never really worked out. At the back of Dawn's mind there was always the nagging feeling that girlfriends were just for now, that one day she'd find a guy and she'd go off with him. Of course in the here and now this sort of thinking got you no where, it wasn't until after Dawn had joined the Marines that she fully embraced the idea of romance with other girls and as for actual sex, it had only been after she'd finished her boot training that she'd jumped in with both feet...as it were.

Even so, Dawn didn't like to date other Marines in her own unit, a failed romance could totally screw with military discipline and morale. Instead Dawn preferred to date the Star Force girls who crewed the ship she was on, or, like now, use the services of one of the cat houses you found on any frontier world or mining colony. Girl-girl sex, or as Dawn was increasingly coming to think of it as 'normal sex', was about the safest sex a woman could have. There was certainly no danger of getting pregnant. It was next to impossible to catch any STDs and little chance of being physically abused (unless you were into that sort of thing) by your partner.

As has been mentioned, Dawn had led her section boldly into the wilder part of the city where they'd found the Painted Lady. The place looked clean and well run; all the 'Good Time Girls' looked over eighteen and the booze wasn't watered down or the prices too high. After checking the place out, Dawn and Billie had given the go ahead for the rest of the section to have a good time; but only after warning them that if anyone got arrested by the Shore Patrol they would be in deep trouble.

After having a meal that didn't have the slight metallic taste of the food on board the Red Witch, Dawn had treated herself to a couple of beers before picking out one of the attractive 'good-time-girls' and going upstairs with her. After almost an hour of the best sex she'd had in a long time...to be honest Dawn hadn't had any sex in a long time so it hadn't been a very high bar to reach; Dawn lay back on the pillows while 'Ashley' snuggled up next to her. The girl had been good, really good and had satisfied all of Dawn's desires and more, she was a real 'pro'.

“Hey, Gunny,” Ashley lifted her head and looked up into Dawn's face.

“Yeah, what?” Dawn replied lazily; all Marines were called 'Gunny' by their 'dates'.

“Sorry, but your times nearly up...unless you wanna pay for another hour?”

To tell the truth, Dawn was tempted; she had a lot of back pay on her pay card with very little to spend it on. There was little point in saving it because she might get killed on her next mission, so...

“No...” Dawn replied with a sigh, “..don't get me wrong you were good, like _totally_ good but...”

“You gotta check on your girls, right?”

“Yeah something like that,” Dawn replied as she pushed herself up into a sitting position.

“Maybe next time you're in Carson City?”

“Yeah maybe,” Dawn nodded and started to look around for her clothes as Ashley slipped out of bed and walked over to the table that stood on the opposite side of the room.

As she watched the girl, Dawn was seriously considering changing her mind, the girl really had been good and she really was attractive; okay her boobs were 'enhanced'...like, _really_ enhanced, but the rest of her was one-hundred percent natural.

“How much?” Dawn asked as he sat on the edge of the bed and picked up pieces of her uniform from from the floor.

Her pay-card was still in her pocket where she'd left it. There was little point in stealing it as it wouldn't work without her thumb print.

“Thirty-five pounds,” Ashley turned and walked back to Dawn holding out the card reader in her hand.

Thirty-five pounds for an hour was a good rate, but this was a back woods planet so thirty-five pounds would go a lot further than it would on Earth. Dawn slipped her card into the reader, entered the amount and added a good tip before pressing her thumb to the fingerprint reader. Taking the machine back, Ashley glanced at it to check everything was in order.

“Wow!” she said when she saw the size of the tip Dawn had given her, “I wish there were more Marines like you around.”

“Hey its like only money,” Dawn replied as she searched for her underwear, “I could be dead next time out...”

“Is it really bad out there fighting those demon things?” Ashley wanted to know.

“The Shedu?” Dawn shrugged, “Its not so bad, we kill more of them than they do of us...” wanting to get off the subject of the war, Dawn changed the topic of conversation, “..so, how much of that money,” Dawn nodded at the reader still held in the naked girl's hand, “do you get to keep?”

“Oh Cordelia...”

“WHAT!?” Dawn laughed out loud.

“Yeah...” Ashley frowned and wondered why this Marine thought that her boss' name was so funny, “...Cordy...”

Once again Ashley was interrupted by Dawn's sniggering.

“You gotta problem?”

“No,” Dawn shook her head, “look I'm sorry, but I knew someone called Cordelia once and...well...the idea of her being in charge of a cat-house well...look it totally doesn't matter. Tell me how much money you get to keep.”

“Cordy's a good boss she only takes sixty percent of my price...I get to keep all my tips.”

“Sixty percent!?” Dawn did some mental calculations, Ashley had just earnt herself somewhere around fourteen pounds.

“Hey,” Ashley sprang to her boss' defence, “a lot of owners take eighty or ninety percent and charge their girls for board and lodging...”

“This Cordy person doesn't?”

“Nah,” Ashley shook her head, “Cordy doesn't charge for food or my room, she even pays for the doctor if any of her girls gets sick or hurt.”

“Some sorta paragon,” Dawn was fully dressed now and stood up ready to go.

“What's a paragon?” Ashley asked with a frown.

“A paratrooper who's not there any-more,” Dawn replied deadpan.

“Whatever,” Ashley shrugged not really getting Dawn's joke, “Cordy says a happy whore is a good whore so she keeps all her girls happy, not like some bosses.”

“Yeah I totally get that,” having spent the first couple of years in this future world on Earth surrounded by people that wanted only the best for her, Dawn was the first to admit that she'd been pretty naïve about the way the universe worked; since joining the Marines her eyes were slowly being opened to what the universe was really like. “Okay,” she moved towards the door, “I gotta go now...”

Ashley ran across the room and held Dawn for a moment before kissing her long and hard on the lips.

“For luck,” she said, “you know when you're fightin' those monsters.”

Leaving Ashley's room, Dawn paused for a moment in the corridor. Life, she told herself, hadn't really changed all that much from her own time and perhaps she should start to take more notice of what was going on around her that wasn't to do with the war.

0=0=0=0


	5. Chapter 5

_You gentlemen can gawk while I'm scrubbing the floors  
And I'm scrubbing the floors while you're gawking.  
And maybe once you tipped me and it made you fell swell,  
In this ratty waterfront, in this ratty hotel,  
But you never know to whom you're talking,  
You never guess to whom you're talking.  
Suddenly one night there's a scream in the night  
And a yell: what the hell is that din?  
And you see me kind of grinning while I'm scrubbing,  
And you'll say: what's she got to grin?_

**Porto Bello, Andersworld.**

Down on her hands and knees, Amy scrubbed the floor as she wondered how she'd got herself into this situation. Sitting back on her heels, as she pushed an errant strand of hair out of her eyes, she told herself that letting the Captain and Etta talk her into things was how she had got herself into her present mess. Amy would be the first to admit that she wasn't 'brave', not for her the mad dash into a burning building to save the puppies and kittens inside, no way! So, why was she on a planet populated by really unpleasant people, why wasn't she on board 'The Freighter' with Etta and the rest of the crew. For a moment Amy started to re-evaluate her relationship with Etta, but quickly dismissed the thoughts she was having, they could wait for later.

Well, the reason she was here, scrubbing a cold, hard, tile floor and not safely tucked up in bed with a warm, soft, Etta was that Captain Flanagan wanted her to 'take out' the planetary defence computer in the old demonic citadel down by the docks. By 'take out', the captain hadn't meant for a nice meal and a bottle of wine, no this 'taking out' would include large explosions and melted down computers. This would then allow Captain Flanagan and the other pirate captains she'd recruited to approach Andersworld and take it for every penny it had.

Some background information might be useful here...

Nearly one-hundred-fifty years ago, Captain Michelle Anders commanding the Earth exploration ship 'Intrepid' discovered the planet that would later be called 'Andersworld', but at the time was called something totally unpronounceable by the demons who lived there. The good Captain also discover that the planet had a sizeable population of human women, several million in fact. It seemed that during the darkest days of the war between the First and his one time minions, one faction of rebel demons had decided to leave Earth for good and set up somewhere far, far away from The First, Earth and the interminable wars the First's attempt at global domination had caused.

To make their new home more comfortable and so they wouldn't have to do all those pesky household chores that stopped a demon doing whatever demons liked to do, they kidnapped several hundreds of thousands of human women mostly from around north western Europe. Once set up on their new planet the demons proceeded to use their captives as slaves and general 'play things', (demons having some very strange, and painful, ideas on what constituted 'play', just ask Hieronymus Bosch). Being slightly more intelligent than the general run-of-the-mill demons, these demons had thought to bring along enough human males to ensure that they'd have a continual and plentiful supply of victims for their 'games' and enough other women left over to cook and sew and generally do all the house work, (these demons were particularly sloppy and lazy so there was always plenty of work for their slaves to do).

As far as the demons were concerned everything was going fine; the garbage got taken out, their meals were cooked, their socks were darned and they had plenty of victims to 'play' with, until Captain Anders and her ship turned up. Of course what happened next has been written about in novels and made into 3D dramas and virtual reality games. The Captain sent down an 'Away Team' who were almost immediately captured. The Captain demanded the release of her crew women. The demons responded by having the Away Team executed in the town square. This was pretty stupid of the demons because while the Intrepid carried nuclear weapons and many other fine examples of the best that Earth's armament industries could supply, the average demon had a sword.

Nuking demon strongholds from orbit (after all it's the only way to be sure), Captain Anders managed to keep human casualties to a minimum while wiping out most of the demonic population. After sending down a larger, more heavily armed Away Team, Captain Anders armed the human population and set them to hunting down the few surviving demons who hadn't been consumed by nuclear fire or were now radioactive. It didn't take long for the vengeful human population to string up the last of the demons. When the radioactive dust had settled and everyone had passed out from too much celebratory wine and dancing in the street. Captain Anders set up a planetary government, so she'd have someone to sign the mining agreements that Earth would need to mine the large deposits of Element 451 that she'd discovered in the hills south of the old demon capital.

As time passed the people of Andersworld (the locals had renamed the planet in honour of their saviour and national hero) had done well out of mining Element 451 for the Alliance. Element 451 was vital to space travel as it was used in the construction of both sub-light and trans-light drives. Up until the time Captain Anders had discovered the deposits on Andersworld the only supplies of 451 available to womankind were some small deposits on Mars. If Earth wanted larger quantities they had to trade with demon held worlds.

So it was that over the years, the population of Andersworld increased to almost three-hundred-million, due in no small way to the local government's aggressive breeding programs, all women were expected to produce at least two children, about fifty percent of the population had many more...babies were popular and motherhood was celebrated and given tax breaks. The income from the 451 mines flowed into the government's coffers until the planet became so rich that the inhabitants didn't actually need to work and this was why Amy was scrubbing the floors of a cheep, dockside hotel.

The Andersworlders seemed to prefer to employ young women from poorer planets to do all the menial jobs that still needed doing no matter how rich you were. Why they didn't just buy robot cleaners and food replicators which would do the jobs quicker and more efficiently than any human, Amy didn't know, but she had a theory. Amy's theory was that the Andersworlders were Nazis. The average local was arrogant and generally unpleasant and held, what in her own time, would be described as 'racist views'. Yes, it was obvious when you thought about it, this was Animal Farm all over again, the slaves had become indistinguishable from the old Masters and were loving every minute of it.

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Amy had arrived on Andersworld about ten days ago in the guise of an Indentured Servant (read 'slave'), she had a work visa for seven years. This actually meant that the local police wouldn't let her leave the planet until her seven years were up; she'd been hired (to use the term loosely) to work at the Dockview Hotel as a 'maid'. The hotel catered for the needs of the crews of visiting star traders. The Traders would import luxury items and technology and then export finished space drives and ingots of Element 451. Amy's real job was to spy out the local defences and once the signal was given to destroy the local planetary defence headquarters, especially the computers, Amy would strike. Luckily for her she wouldn't have to do this last completely alone. When the time was right, pirate commandos would be dropped from orbit to help in her assault on the headquarters.

In the ten days that she'd been here Amy had discovered that her task wasn't quite as impossible as it at first appeared. Until the outbreak of the Shedu War the Andersworlders had not paid much attention to planetary defence because there were always Alliance warships patrolling the Andersworld system. But now the Alliance ships had gone to fight the Shedu and the Andersworlders would have to learn to defend themselves. They had the money to pay for the best weapons, they built their own star drives and some of their own ships, but what they lacked and couldn't be bought with hard cash was any sort of military tradition or expertise. Yes, they had a worldwide police force, yes they had an effective anti-smuggling force but they'd never had a military. They hired the best instructors however and there was no shortage of recruits, but it took time to build up a military from absolutely nothing.

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“OWWW!” Amy yelped as Madam Sybil crept up behind her and brushed Amy's arm with her 'pain stick'.

“Be sure you scrub that floor 'til I can see my face in it,” Madam Sybil warned as she stood over Amy and toyed with the electric goad she held in her hands, “get right in to the corners and don't forget to scrub under the furniture.”

“No Ma'am, of course Ma'am,” Amy replied meekly as she rubbed her arm where the pain stick had touched her.

“Then when you've finished doing that, don't forget you've got the beds to make and the rooms to tidy up,” Madam Sybil lifted the pain stick menacingly letting Amy know without having to say anything what would happen if she did forget.

“Yes Ma'am,” Amy went back to her scrubbing and watched out of the corner of her eye as the hotel manager stood over her for a few more minutes before heading back to her office behind the reception desk.

Madam Sybil ran the hotel with the help (or hindrance) of her wife Madam Bazilla. While Madam Sybil appeared to know what she was doing and was actually quite pleasant (for an Andersworlder) to her off planet guests, Madam Bazilla was, quite frankly, incompetent with little real idea of how to deal with people who weren't from Andersworld.

Pausing in her scrubbing for a moment, Amy watched with darkened eyes as Madam Sybil disappeared into her office. The woman would pay for what she'd just done, she had no idea who she was dealing with, Amy was a powerful witch and it was unwise to cross her. Tonight when Madam Sybil was asleep in her bed, Amy would send demons and monsters into her dreams to anally rape her and visit such indignities on her that she'd wake up screaming and be afraid to go back to sleep. The thought of what her dream monsters would do to the unpleasant hotel manager made Amy smile for a moment, but then she remembered where she was and who she was supposed to be.

“Here, girl...”

Amy looked up fearfully from her scrubbing to see one of the hotel's guests standing to her left, the woman was an engineer aboard one of the many visiting star traders, she held out a five Mark note to Amy.

“...take this,” she offered the note, “spend it on something when you get some time off...you do get time off, right?”

Amy took the note and nodded her head, she got one day off in every seven.

“Thanks,” Amy stuffed the note down the front of her overall, if Madam Bazilla saw she had money she'd surely take it from her for 'safe keeping'.

Watching as the starfarer walked on out of the front door with her buddy, Amy told herself that on 'The Day' there might be one or two people that she wouldn't order shot.

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**The Old Governor's Residence, Porto Bello.**

“What do you mean the shows been cancelled?” Stella Stardust; singer and star of stage and 3DDVC demanded of her manager, “you told me the sales figures were through the roof and what am I supposed to do with these,” Stella wanted to know as she cupped her breasts and pushed them up for her manager to see, “I had these enhanced just for the part...”

“I think they look nice,” observed Maggie Singh, Stella's manager, “they go nicely with the blue hair...”

“You think?” Stella lost track of her temper for a moment as she looked down at her deep and recently enhanced cleavage while she tossed her long blue locks over her shoulder. Shaking her head she remembered that she was supposed to be angry. “Look you told me yourself that the pick-up for the 'Adventures of Space Girl' were better than the projected numbers, what changed?”

It was true the first season of 'The Adventures of Space Girl'; a sort of commando, secret agent character that flew around the known galaxy taking on the forces of evil; dressed only in a skin tight body suit and armed with an implausibly big sidearm, had gone down very well with the teen Andersworlders it was aimed at. But now the local entertainment executives were saying that they wanted a show with a more local hero in the lead slot. Someone who would encourage enlistment in the local armed forces. The truth was that the government wanted an Andersworld hero (even a fictitious one) for the planet's youth to look up to and emulate. Also, Space Girl showed that off-worlders could be just as brave and resourceful as Andersworlders and that was something the local powers-that-be didn't want, it didn't fit in with their ideas about 'racial superiority'. So after only one season, 'The Adventures of Space Girl' had been canned to join the great library of shows that would achieve cult status in twenty or thirty years time.

“Politics, sweetie,” Maggie explained simply, “you're no longer 'flavour of the month' with the people in charge.”

“So what do we do now?” Stella asked she slumped down on an overstuffed armchair and gazed out of the window which looked out of the great, azure blue, bay below where the mansion had been built.

“Well,” Maggie sighed as she too sat down in a chair facing Stella's, “the tour to promote season two is off...on the plus side you'll still be paid for it and there's the golden handshake you'll get for them breaking the contract.”

“How many millions is that?” Stella asked without any real excitement.

“Thirteen million Marks,” Maggie replied, “which works out at nearly four million Alliance D'lahs...”

“Whatever,” Stella shrugged; she was already very rich and few million D'lahs more wouldn't make that much difference to her fortune.

What worried her was the effect this cancellation would have on her career, there were always people ready to say that she'd screwed up in some way and that was the real reason the show had been cancelled. The truth was that ever since the incident aboard the Indomitable her career had been slowly going down the drain. Word had got out that she'd not exactly been the hero she always played in the shows and movies she starred in. What people didn't seem to understand was she was an actress not a commando, she played at being brave, which was easy when the people shooting at you were scripted to miss and then die in the next scene. It was a different matter when the bullets shot at you weren't blanks and would blow big, bloody, holes in your very sexy hide.

For a moment Stella flashed back to the bridge of the Indomitable as she'd tried to stop all the milky white fluid from leaking out of that robot girl. The robot, her name had been Buffy, had almost single handedly recaptured the battleship from the pirates who were intent on stealing it; but, even all her super-strength and bullet resistant systems hadn't saved her from being shot and seriously damaged. If a combat robot could almost die, how was she, an easily damaged human, with no real combat training supposed to take on hardened, blood thirsty, pirates? But there were gossips who would always say she could have done more.

“I've got an offer for you to play a lead part in a movie set during the First's Wars,” Maggie explained, “but they want you to read for it first and the new boobs will have to go...”

“Me read?” Stella exclaimed, “Stella Stardust doesn't read for parts.”

“Sorry sweetie,” Maggie said sadly, “but you do now.”

So that was it, her career was over, she'd not read for a part since after her second movie.

“I suppose we're going to get totally thrown out of here,” Stella gestured to the opulent interior of the old mansion, “and told to like leave the planet by sundown?”

“Nah,” Maggie shook her head, “we're good 'til the end of the month.”

“Cool,” Stella said quietly as she wondered what had happened to that robot girl after she'd been repaired; she was pretty sure that Buffy wouldn't have been thrown on the junk pile, not like her.

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**Amy's Room.**

Lying in her hard, narrow bed, Amy smiled into the darkness of her little room as Madam Sybil screamed and screamed in her sleep. The dreams she'd sent the woman were the worst Amy's mind could come up with and just to add a little more terror she was preventing Madam Sybil from being able to wake up. Maybe next time the hotel manager thought of using her pain stick on the poor indentured maid, she'd remember the horrific dreams and think twice.

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_...and the ship, the black freighter,  
With the skull at the masthead,  
Sails into the bay._

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‘The Black Freighter’ highlight and right click to follow the link…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GrRWdmQMcc


	6. Chapter 6

_When I was just a little girl, or so my mother told me,  
Way haul away, we'll haul away Jo.  
That if I did not kiss the girls, my lips would all grow mouldy,   
Way haul away, we'll haul away Jo._

Haul Away Jo(e); Traditional.

Highlight and right click.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvBHdw-EqLM

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**Porto Bello Docks, Andersworld.**

The sun shone down and glinted off the deep blue sea as Amy couldn't help observing to herself that Andersworld was a really beautiful place...it was such a pity that the people were such pigs. It was now fourteen days since she'd arrived on the planet and she was sort of kicking herself for being so stupid. Not for being actually on the world, that was something she'd allowed herself to be talked into, but would, if things turned out as they were supposed to, end up with her being a very rich woman. No, what she was kicking herself about was her situation back at the hotel; she'd been so involved with pretending to be a frightened, downtrodden, indentured servant that she'd forgotten she was actually a powerful witch.

However, the play acting hadn't lasted too long, now she had plenty of time to study the planet's defences because Madams Sybil and Bazilla were doing all her work for her and not realising it! Once Amy had recognised the trap she'd fallen into (the trap of being too invested in her 'part') it had been the work of about half-an-hour to cast the spell over the two women so they'd do their own house work whilst believing that Amy was doing it; she'd also moved herself into one of the guest rooms and out of the drafty garret where she'd been forced to live.

Standing on the dockside, Amy looked across the water to the old demon castle on the opposite headland. Porto Bello was built around a large bay and had once been an important trading port when the demons had been in charge. From what she'd found out the docks would be full of demon ships bringing in trade goods from all around the world. It must have been a fantastic sight with all those sailing ships filling the harbour, the forests of masts, the lines of human slaves working under the lash to unload the ships...just for a moment Amy shivered at the thought of all those women working from sun-up to sun-down and being beaten with whips if they slowed in their work for even a moment.

Dragging her eyes away from the quays and old warehouses (now turned into shops), Amy once again directed her gaze at the old demonic fortress. It had escaped destruction when Captain Anders had attacked and destroyed the demons who lived on this world because the old fortress was slap-dab in the middle of Porto Bello and its destruction would have meant the deaths of tens of thousands of humans, so the good Captain didn't nuke it from orbit. Instead she sent down a landing party who were armed and armoured to the teeth and let them deal with the sword and axe swinging demons. The ensuing battle had been as short as it had been bloody.

As a result the castle was left almost completely undamaged. For many years the local government had used the site as a sort of museum and memorial that showed how the women of this world had suffered under demonic rule. Now it was the temporary headquarters of the planetary defences while a purpose built headquarters was being constructed under the Iron Mountains a couple of hundred miles to the north east. As a result of the castle having been a public building for so long, Amy had had no problem finding plans of the interior, however she'd be pretty stupid to think these plans were still one-hundred-percent accurate; there'd no doubt been a lot of alterations done that she knew nothing about.

One thing was for sure, however, she and her sister pirates weren't going to have such an easy time attacking the fort as Captain Anders' people had. On the walls in place of the ancient catapults and bolt throwers were double-barrelled auto-canons along with surface to air missile systems. It was obvious even with Amy's limited military knowledge that any direct assault on the castle would end in a bloody defeat for the attackers. For a moment Amy wondered why Captain Flanagan had sent her, why not Etta of someone with at least some ground combat experience, not knowing the answer Amy just sighed and shrugged her shoulders; perhaps she was supposed to 'think outside the box'.

“Whatever,” Amy gave a long sigh as she looked down at the really blue water of the harbour; the water here was actually blue because there were some minerals that turned it that colour. 

Thinking about maybe heading for one of the nearby popular beaches and perhaps taking a swim; the weather was warm and the sea never got that cold, a thought struck Amy like being slapped across the face by one of the local pseudopods. Thinking hard she vaguely remembered something about ancient waste pipes that discharged their loads out into the harbour; the demons hadn't been exactly concerned about water pollution back in the day. Amy seemed to remember that at least some of those pipes were quite big enough to fit the bodies of dead slaves into, she wondered if they were still there, unblocked and just waiting for a band of plucky pirate raiders to use them to infiltrate the castle.

Putting all ideas of going for a relaxing swim that afternoon aside, Amy turned away from the castle and prepared herself for an afternoon spent in the stuffy confines of the local records office. As she did so she noticed a woman making her way through the bustle of the dockside market stalls. The reason this woman stood out from the crowd was the way she was dressed. While Amy had taken some pains to look like a local woman; she wore boots, skin tight cream coloured pants, a very baggy white shirt under a brightly coloured and heavily embroidered waste-coat that went down to her thighs, all set off with a board brimmed hat with a red feather stuck in the band. The woman was conspicuous in a tan raincoat with the collar turned up, dark glasses and fedora pulled down to further hide her face.

What the woman's disguise, if you could call it that, couldn't hide was her bright blue hair and her enhanced breasts. These defied the baggy folds of the raincoat and stretched the material tight over her chest as her blue hair escaped from under her hat. Amy was just thinking that as a disguise this outfit was more than a little ineffective something else caught her attention. About thirty yards to her left a large agitated group of local teenagers burst from between two stalls. They paused for a moment as they chattered excitedly between themselves, Amy couldn't hear what they were saying but from their body language she guessed that they were looking for someone. Finding her eyes drifting back to the woman in the ill fitting raincoat, Amy realised who the teen-girls had to be looking for.

“THERE SHE IS!” cried one of the girls as she pointed to the woman in the raincoat.

“SPACE GIRL!!!” screamed the other girls as they caught sight of their quarry and started to run towards the woman.

'Space Girl', for that was who Amy now recognised the woman to be, turned and started to run but found her escape route blocked by crowds of people and market stalls. Turning, Amy was about to walk away, but stopped to look back to where the actress struggled to escape her fans, the girls were almost on top of her now. Amy started to tell herself that she couldn't just leave the woman to be torn apart by her fans. Having seen a couple of episodes of 'Space Girl', Amy had quite enjoyed them...they were funny and a little over the top, they appealed to her sense of the ridiculous, she found she couldn't just leave the actress to a fate worse than death. The local girls played rough and the chances were that 'Space Girl' would end the morning stripped naked and bruised from where her 'fans' had taken their souvenirs.

Striding towards the downed actress who was even now trying to fend off the eager hands of her fans as they grabbed at her clothes, Amy used a little magic to push people out of her way. Reaching the place were the young woman cowered on the cobbles, Amy used a stronger blast of magic to make some room for herself and the blue haired woman, she held out her hand.

“Come with me if you want to live,” Amy told the woman dramatically.

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**TASS Reluctant.**

**“Okay, Buffy,” Willow stepped away from the examination table and turned to replace her diagnostic tools in their carrier case, “you can put your clothes back on, we're finished now.”**

**“Sometimes I think you make me take off my clothes so you can admire my body,” Buffy replied as she got off the examination table and started to put on her underwear.**

**“Buffy!” Willow cried out in shock, “How could you think such thing, the thought never...”**

**“But I'm not really, 'Buffy' am I?” Buffy said as she continued to get dressed, “I'm a robot, I used to be a sex-bot so...”**

**“You wanna have sex?” Willow asked rather nervously as she backed away from Buffy as far as the little medical examination room would allow.**

**“No!” Buffy smiled, she was fully dressed now, “But that _is_ what I am, right?”**

**“Sort of...” Willow admitted, she saw Buffy's raised eyebrow, “...oh okay,” she sighed, “you are a robot and you used to be a sex-bot but you're so much more than that now...” Willow thought it was time to change the subject, “...here,” Willow picked up her pad computer, “Cots Lehane and I thought you might like to see these.”**

**“What you got there, L-t?” Buffy wanted to know; she knew when Willow was trying to distract her, like she was now.**

**“Faith...I mean Cots Lehane, had Tara do some research,” Willow explained, “we thought you might like to see some of the results.”**

**“And?” Buffy took a couple of steps to bring herself over to stand next to Willow.**

**“Pictures,” Willow held out her pad computer to her robot friend, “of...”**

**“Me...” Buffy gasped as she took the pad from Willow's hand, “...I mean the _real_ me...”**

**“You're real too sweetie,” Willow replied sadly.**

**“So, this is Sheriff Buffy Summers,” Buffy said as she thumbed her way through the pictures.**

**“And there's pictures of her wife and their children...” Willow added as she saw the frown crease Buffy's face, “what's wrong?”**

**“You thought these would make me feel better about myself?” Buffy asked bitterly as she passed the pad back to Willow, “if you did then you'd be wrong...they just show me things I can't have. I can't have children, I can't love someone...”**

**“But...!” Willow tried to interrupt but Buffy kept on talking.**

**“Yeah I know I can pretend to love someone or appear to be enjoying sex, but...”**

**There was a quiet click as Willow stepped forward and touched the 'reset' button at the base of Buffy's skull.**

**“Darn,” Willow sighed as she stood back to look at the now inactive Buffy-bot, “looks like you and me have got some major reprogramming to do!”**

****

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**Porto Bello, Andersworld.**

Sitting across the table from her new found, bestfriend for ever, in the water side café, Amy found she couldn't keep her eyes off Stella's breasts. Ever since she'd arrived in this all female universe of the future and had started to look at other women as possible romantic partners, she'd begun to understand what the guys from her own time had seen in boobs. Amy found herself mesmerised by the way Stella's breasts wobbled enticingly as she spoke or how they rose and fell every time the young woman took a deep breath. It didn't help that now Stella had taken off her raincoat disguise, Amy could see that she was wearing an almost see-through, clingy blouse with nothing underneath it. Staring at the blue haired woman's cleavage, Amy found that her palms itched to feel Stella's hard nipples under them and... Suddenly, Amy realised that Stella had stopped talking and was looking at her as if she expected some sort of answer.

“What?” Amy blinked owlishly at Stella, she had no idea what the girl had been saying.

“I was just saying,” Stella recapped, “if there's anything I can do to repay you...” Stella sighed heavily and her breasts rose and fell drawing Amy's eyes back from where they'd momentarily strayed to the other woman's face.

“Do you wanna have sex?” Amy asked breathlessly, “I know a little place further down the beach that hires out rooms by the hour...”

“Thank The Lady,” Stella gasped as she stood up, grabbed her discarded raincoat and Amy's hand, “I thought you'd never ask!”

0=0=0=0

A couple of hours later, Amy lay on her back in the bed as the cool sea breeze caressed her naked body. The sex had been, to be quite frank, mind-blowing...the best she'd had...ever! Stella it appeared was an enthusiastic and skilled lover, she'd played Amy's body like a concert violinist played her instrument. There had been moments when Amy didn't believe she could survive all the pleasure Stella was giving her; it was really making her re-evaluate her relationship with Etta.

When Amy had arrived in this particular future she'd been to say the least confused, Etta had sort of taken her under her wing and Amy had been grateful for that. So, when Etta had asked if they could start a sexual relationship, Amy had agreed more because she thought it was a good idea than because she 'loved' Etta. Yes Etta was nice, Amy really liked her but she didn't love her, but Stella…

Well, even after so short an acquaintance, Amy felt herself falling for the starlet. So, she asked herself, was this what love felt like? She'd never felt love before, of course there'd been that love spell that she'd done for Xander Harris which had gone oh so badly wrong. She'd thought she was in love then, but like Mr Giles the librarian had said, what she was feeling wasn't love it was 'obsession'. What she was feeling now felt better, nicer than what she'd felt then.

“...you know I'm incredibly rich,” Stella called from over by the open window, she was naked too and the sunlight played on her body through the net curtains that moved slowly in the breeze, “I could take you anywhere you wanted to go...”

“If only,” Amy sighed sadly. 

“What do you mean?” Stella asked as she came back over to the bed and sat down heavily making her breasts bounce provocatively as she did so; for a moment Amy forgot what she'd been about to say.

“Erm...” Amy struggled to rein in her wandering mind, “...I sorta made some promises to some people to do some stuff, so I can't go anywhere just now...”

Already a life that didn't involve pirates and wandering the space lanes in search of defenceless merchant-ships called to her. So what if Stella's acting career appeared to be at an end, she was still a rich woman they could go anywhere, do anything together. Amy tried to tell herself that the money didn't matter, but she knew deep down it did, money made things easier.

“So what have you promised to do?” Stella smiled as moved to straddle Amy's defenceless body, she ran her hands over Amy's stomach working her way up to her breasts, “I like your boobs,” Stella sighed as she caressed Amy making her sigh, “they're so small an' firm an' round...not like these,” Stella glanced down at her own large breasts, “as soon as I get somewhere with a good cosmetic surgeon I'm having them reduced...I only got them for the show and now its been cancelled...”

“NO!” Amy cried.

“No?” Stella frowned.

“Please don't get rid of them,” Amy almost begged; for a moment she struggled with the morality of casting a spell on Stella to make her keep her boobs, morality won but it had been a close run thing.

“You like them?” Stella raised an eyebrow as she moved her hands from Amy's breasts to her own and squeezed them together.

“I love them...” Amy gasped, “...and I love you but...

“But?”

“Like I say I'm sorta spoken for,” Amy replied miserably.

“So,” Stella got herself comfortable as she sat on Amy's stomach, “what's so important that you can't run away with me?”

“Well, like I say I've got some stuff to do,” Amy began to explain, “then I've got to dump my old girlfriend, I mean it wouldn't be right just to leave without saying anything.”

“So, what's this stuff you've got to do?” Stella asked again.

“Well...” for a moment Amy wondered how she could explain that she was a pirate witch, “...well...I need to look at some stuff...”

“Like?” Stella leaned over Amy's body and let her breasts brush against Amy's.

“Well I could do with seeing inside that old demon castle,” Amy replied before she got too distracted by what Stella was doing.

“The Citadel?”

“Uh-huh,” Amy sighed as her lips yearned to kiss Stella's.

“Oh that's easy,” Stella was lying on top of Amy now, “I'll have my manager arrange a visit for tomorrow.”

0=0=0=0


	7. Chapter 7

_Why do them yaller girls love me so?  
Away Santy Anno.   
Because I won't tell them all I know,   
All on the plains of Mexico._

Santy Anno: traditional.

Highlight and right click.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPIcwFKrTus

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**The Citadel, Porto Bello.**

“Ewwwww!” squeaked Stella as she stood next to Amy and looked down into the old sewer, she turned to stare at her new girlfriend, “Tell me again why you're so interested in where demons poured their poop.”

“It's a hobby,” Amy replied lamely; she'd not really thought her cover story through.

The previous day as Amy'd pondered how she was going to get some of her pirate sisters into the old castle; the idea had suddenly popped into her mind to use the old sewage system. By pure chance she'd then met and rapidly gone to bed with Stella Stardust (star of stage, screen and 3DDVC) who'd (by using her celebrity status) managed to get them both into the citadel. The old fortification was now being used by the Andersworlders as the temporary headquarters for their newly formed planetary defence forces.

The chamber itself was about fifty feet square, the walls were about eight feet high until they rose to form a dome the apex of which must have been twenty or twenty-five feet above the floor. The four walls were penetrated by three passageways and a flooded tunnel that led out into the bay. Their guide told them that two of the corridors had led to more cells and torture chambers but were now blocked off by stonework that had filled the corridors when their roofs had collapsed. The unblocked corridor which they'd used to get down into this 'waste disposal unit' was about four feet wide and seven feet tall, an easy fit for even a heavily armed pirate.

The flooded tunnel that led out into the bay was about six feet across, again an easy fit for a pirate, even one in a diver's suit carrying weapons and explosives. The end of the tunnel opened into a square dock like structure about twelve feet on a side. The guide explained how the demon's female slaves would bring human, demonic and food waste down into the chamber and throw it into the 'dock'. The slaves had also had to dispose of any of the demon's human victims in the self same way. The 'waste' was then washed out to sea as the tide went out and was eaten by the creatures that inhabited the bay.

“A hobby?” Stella wondered aloud.

“Sort of,” Amy admitted while refusing to catch her new friend's eye.

“You're hiding something...” Stella's eyes narrowed; yes they'd got together pretty damned fast (ten minutes must be a record) but Stella sensed in Amy a kindred spirit and she really wanted this relationship to grow and blossom.

The truth was, Stella could have almost any girl or woman that took her fancy from amongst her millions of fans. But that was just for sex, Stella wanted a proper relationship. Feeling that her career was coming to an end she was looking to the future and she wanted someone to spend that future with.

“Look,” Amy replied quietly, “I'll explain, but not here...”

“This better be good,” Stella warned.

“Okay,” Amy said brightly as she turned to look at their guide; the young Andersworld soldier was staring at Stella and hardly appeared to notice that Amy was speaking to her, “so does this tunnel still connect with the sea?”

“What?” the soldier blinked and turned to look at Amy as if she'd only just realised she was there.

“The tunnel,” Amy said with more than a little sarcasm, “is it still open?”

“Oh, yeah, the tunnel...” the girl soldier appeared to be having trouble concentrating, being in close proximity to one of her 3DDVC idols was making it difficult for her to concentrate.

“TALK!” Amy snapped as she cast a compulsion spell over the teenager.

“The tunnel is seventy-five yards long and opens out in the bay,” the girl recited in a monotone.

“How wide is it?” Amy wanted to know.

“About six feet across...”

“All the way along?”

“Yes.”

“Amy?” Stella watched with growing concern as her new found lover questioned the girl, “What's going on?”

“Is the tunnel or its entrance and exit guarded in any way?” Amy wanted to know while ignoring Stella for the moment.

“No, it wasn't thought worthwhile,” replied the soldier-girl.

“Good,” Amy nodded, “one final question, is the sea end of this tunnel under water?”

“Yes, but only at high tide.”

“Cool,” Amy smiled as a plan formed in her mind, “you may go now,” she told the girl, “in thirty seconds you will remember only that you spent the afternoon showing Stella Stardust and her friend around the old dungeons and she gave you her autograph...” Amy glanced at Stella, “...sign her boob or something...”

“Yeah okay,” Stella replied uncertainly; she pulled a marker pen from her shoulder bag and signed the teenager's right breast.

“What the hellmouth's going on Amy?” Stella demanded as she watched the soldier wander off down a tunnel.

“Please,” Amy pleaded, “I'll explain everything once we're outta here...”

“You better,” Stella warned, she didn't like being taken for a fool.

0=0=0=0

**Aboard the TASS Red Witch.**

Sitting by herself in the ship's small library area, Dawn starred at the computer monitor and tried to make sense of what she'd discovered. Having typed in a search for, 'slave colonies', she'd read through the results. After wading through all the entries that referred to historical, slave colonies or ones that had been set up by various demon tribes, she'd got down to the entries that claimed that the Terran Alliance had set up its own slave colonies on outlying planets. Here the inmates were forced to mine dangerous minerals or make equipment for the military at a fraction of the price that would be charged if the workers were free. Frowning, Dawn wondered why such items weren't either built by robots or replicated. The answer she found left a bad taste in her mouth. It appeared that whoever ran these colonies actually enjoyed tormenting the inmates. When she'd found this out, Dawn had started to wonder if these colonies were being run by demons.

“This can't be right,” Dawn told herself; ever since she'd appeared in this future people had always been kind to her.

Dawn thought of her adoptive family back on Earth, there was no way people like Maggie and Hannah would allow their government to do such things. If they ever found out that this sort of thing was going on they'd raise such a 'stink' that no government would dare not close these colonies and bring any wrong doers to justice. 

But...

But, what about what that pirate woman had said about the company she worked for treating her and her sister workers almost like slaves, she'd sounded pretty convincing. But, there again she was about to be thrown out of the airlock so she might say anything if she thought that one of the Marine guards might let her escape if she told a sad enough story. No, this had to be one of those 'conspiracy theory' things like people believing in Nazi bases at the south pole of how the government was working with aliens to enslave the human race. This last had almost been true; there had been politicians who'd worked with The First to bring about Hell-on-Earth. But generally speaking all those conspiracies were just people taking some incomplete information, mixing it up and jumping to the wrong conclusions.

“I didn't believe it either...”

Turning in her seat, Dawn found Laura Cross standing behind her.

“How long have you been standing there, Marine Cross?” Dawn asked in her best annoyed corporal's voice.

“Long enough to see what you've been looking at,” Laura replied, “remember I work here in the library.”

It was true, Laura's ship board job, once she'd completed all her marine duties was as librarian. Just at that moment Dawn really missed Rupert Giles, he'd never fall for ill researched theories about the Alliance or Earth Corporations running what were basically work camps on far away worlds.

“You believe all this...” Dawn gestured vaguely at the screen, “...this...crap?”

“It's not crap,” Laura said earnestly as she pulled up a spare chair and sat down next to Dawn, “its the truth the evidence is all there you just have to look for it.” Laura took a breath and started to speak again before Dawn had a chance to say anything, “How do you explain how cheaply the government gets all our kit?”

“Its made by robots in underground factories on Earth,” Dawn replied.

“That's what they want you to think,” Laura explained breathlessly, “the mega-corporations have factories on other planets where they work prisoners to death and...”

“Hey look,” Dawn tried to inject a little common sense, “if that was so they'd have to transport everything back to Earth, the transport costs alone would make everything more expensive than if it was made back home...”

“Not if they used there own transports,” Laura replied.

“Then why haven't the crews said anything about where all this gear comes from?” Dawn wanted to know.

“Because they're silenced by the mega-corps...” this or something like it appeared to be Laura's answer to any argument Dawn used to refute her story.

“...so you see,” Laura summed up as she came to the end of her diatribe, “by joining the Marines we're actually helping 'The Man' enslave womankind again.” 

“Oh, Lady,” Dawn groaned she'd heard all this sort of thing before, it was a popular narrative amongst the hard-line feminist political groups who wanted to get rid of even the few men who were born in the here and now.

These were the groups, like the 'Daughters of Diana', who thought that all men should be locked safely away were they couldn't harm womankind. That women shouldn't have _any_ contact with males, not even for breeding purposes and if there was some way for a woman to get pregnant without the use of semen, then all males should be exterminated. When she was at school Dawn had heard some pretty wild stories about how men had treated women before the First's wars. How all women were cruelly oppressed by their male overlords. Dawn would be the first to admit that sex equality wasn't perfect even in the old United States. But the way some women went on made the women of the past sound as if they were helpless, cowering slaves. This theory didn't stand up to close examination however; if women had been that helpless how come they'd eventually defeated The First and how did you explain all the slayers?

“Look, Marine Cross,” Dawn’d had enough, she was going to bring this to a halt, “I don't care what you do in your spare time, but if I hear you talking about all this crap while on duty I'll have you up in front of the Company commander so fast y'feet won't touch the ground, roger that so far?”

“Roger,” Laura replied sullenly, “but you'll see that I'm right.”

“Oh bollocks!” Dawn dismissed Laura's comment with one of Spike's favourite words, “Get outta here,” she ordered, adding, “an' get a feckin' life, I think the Quarter-Mistress has got some in new!”

0=0=0=0

**A dockside café, early evening, Andersworld.**

The sun was setting over the sea turning its surface from blue to deep purple, the wispy clouds were streaked with orange and red as the last few rays of the local sun shone through the atmosphere. There was no deigning it, Andersworld had some beautiful sunsets. Amy and Stella were sitting at a table outside the café enjoying a glass of wine. Amy sipped hers, although she didn't know much about wine she liked this, it was probably just the 'house red' but it was nice. In fact Andersworld was a very nice place...if only she could work out a way of wiping out the present population and replacing them with a bunch of nicer people.

“Okay,” Stella said breaking into Amy's thoughts on planetary genocide, “what's going on?” the blue haired girl demanded, “And don't give me any of that garbage about 'hobbies'.”

“Erm...” Amy hesitated; she needed to think up a good cover story quickly or wipe the memory from Stella's mind, whatever she decided to do she needed to do it now; a flash of inspiration hit her right at that moment, she'd tell the truth! “How would you react if I told you that I'm a witch working for a gang of pirates who're intent on raiding Andersworld and carrying off all the Element 451 they can find?”

“I don't know,” Stella paused for a moment, “do you think its something you're likely to say?”

Stella's experience with pirates had not been good (was anybody's?), she'd been aboard a Terran Alliance warship when a bunch of pirates had tried to steal it. If it hadn't been for a robotic combat cook, who'd taken down most of the pirate boarding party, Stella would probably still be being held for ransom or worse!

“No!” Amy replied quickly, she'd read Stella's body language and decided that telling her she was a pirate was probably not a good idea, however she'd now had time to think. “No, silly,” Amy laughed light heartedly, “I work for the Alliance Environmental Agency,” an organisation Amy was fairly sure didn't exist, “we go from planet to planet checking that the demons that might have lived here before womankind didn't screw with the biosphere...” Amy ran out of technobabble at this point, “...but the part about being a witch is true.”

“Wow!” Stella gasped as she stared deeply into Amy's eyes, “Being a witch must be so coooool!”

“Its not so bad,” Amy let some multi coloured sparkles fall from her finger tips.

“Gee!” Stella giggled like a little girl, “Could ya show me some tricks?”

“Tricks?” Amy replied in mock shock, “Magic isn't for 'tricks',” she made a red rose appear in her hand and handed it to Stella; this was too easy, distract the girl with magic tricks and she'd forget all about why she'd spent the day wandering around an old demon's castle.

“It's not?” Stella sighed sadly.

“No,” Amy shook her head gravely, with a stern look on her face, “magic is for serious stuff,” she added unwittingly mimicking Willow's words from centuries earlier, “however...”

“However, what?” Stella asked eagerly.

“I might be persuaded to do some tricks given the right incentive,” Amy replied coyly.

“Your place or mine?” Stella asked urgently.

“Mine,” Amy stood up and left some magic money on the table; the waitress had been surely and rude no way was Amy leaving a real tip, “its closer!”

0=0=0=0

**Amy's room, later that night.**

One of Andersworld's moons shone its silvery light in through the window of Amy's room as the gentle sea breeze made the net curtains sway like ghosts in the night. Sitting up in bed Amy waited as she listened to Stella's gentle breathing, satisfied that her movement hadn't disturbed the young woman, Amy picked up her robe from where she'd discarded it and put it on. It wasn't cold and she didn't really need it but she felt odd walking around nude. Having got back to her room (Amy had by now convinced the hotel's owners that she was an important guest and she was now staying in the hotel's most expensive suite), Stella and herself had made wild, passionate, magically enhanced, screaming, monkey sex before falling into an exhausted sleep. However, Amy had some work to do before she could sleep off the effects of all the sex and magic.

Padding silently over to a chest of drawers, she crouched down and opened the bottom drawer. Removing a nondescript plastic case, she got up and walked over to the window. Stepping out onto the balcony she placed the case on the table there and opened it. Switching a switch Amy saw that the transmitter was active, she checked the power levels before telling the micro computer to search out the Black Freighter's IFF code. Only moments later the transmitter gave a soft beep to tell Amy it'd found its target. Pulling up a chair Amy sat down and started to encrypt her message, she had a lot to say and time was running short.

_And the ship, the black freighter,  
With fifty long cannons,  
Opens fire on the town._

0=0=0=0


	8. Chapter 8

**Porto Bello.**

It was almost midnight as Amy walked along the docks to the rendezvous. Earlier in the day she'd received what to anybody else would look like an innocent message on her pad. It told her to meet a friend at a certain bar at a certain time. It was in fact instructions to meet her sister pirates that very night. Coming to the spot where the meeting was supposed to take place, Amy stopped and looked out over the harbour. It was a clear night and the stars (Andersworld had no large moons like Earth only a couple of small natural satellites) reflected off the calm black waters like fireflies. No boats or ships disturbed the almost mirror like surface of the sea as they were all tied up safely against the dock or at buoys out in the bay.

On shore the few people who were still out and about were hurrying home, the Andersworlders didn't stay out much after twenty-three o'clock; this was a hold over from centuries of demonic curfews. Here and there off-world workers hurried to close the few bars and restaurants that remained open until what the locals considered late, but no one appeared to be taking very much interest to a lone woman, like herself, who was just standing looking out to sea. Taking her pad from the pocket of her waistcoat, Amy checked the time once again and sighed heavily. It was nearly time for her contact to arrive, she hoped whoever it was wouldn't be late. Amy'd had to postpone an evening with Stella which would have no doubt ended in either her own or Stella's bed. The prospect of a night spent with her new girlfriend was much more enticing than waiting on a dark, lonely, dock for a spy to turn up.

“The sisters of the night...” a voice came out the shadows to her left, “...have no suntan...”

“What!?” Amy turned to face however was talking gibberish at her; it was only when she saw the tell tale shape of a woman standing next to a pile of crates did Amy remember that she was supposed to give a reply, “...and, tanning creams makes them turn orange...who thinks up these passwords?”

“Don't know,” the figure stepped forward and Amy suddenly realised that the 'lone' figure wasn't alone, there were three other figures with her. “Jenny Rangan,” the woman introduced herself and held out her hand; Amy shook the proffered hand as she wondered why there'd been so many pirates sent to what was supposed to be a simple meeting, “Amy Madison?”

“That's me,” Amy confirmed, “what's...?”

“No time for questions,” Jenny replied, “there isn't much time...”

“I think there is,” Amy said pointedly; she was already getting a bad feeling about this meeting, “now what's going on and why isn't there much time?”

“Because the raid starts in just over three hours time,” another woman stepped forward and introduced herself, “Jenny Boyle and these two are Jenny Huber and Jenny Himesaki.”

“You're all called Jenny?” just at that moment Amy felt like the universe was playing an enormous practical joke on her.

“Yeah,” Jenny Rangan nodded, “you got a problem with that?”

“No...” Amy shook her head, “...not as such...but don't you find it confusing?”

“Confusing?” Jenny Huber asked.

“Y'know,” Amy made a gesture that put over the point that if the pirates weren't confused she was, “like you all having the same name.”

“No,” chorused the four Pirate Jennys.

“Whatever,” Amy sighed defeated, “okay, what's all this about the attack starting in three hours?”

“Less than three hours now,” Jenny Himesaki pointed out.

“Whatever,” Amy repeated, “the attack?”

“Yeah,” Jenny Rangan, who appeared to be the spokes-Jenny for the group explained, “things went better than Captain Flanagan expected and she was able to recruit more captains even quicker than she'd hoped, so, the date for the raid was brought forward...”

“Strike while the laser's hot,” Jenny Huber pointed out eagerly.

“No one told me,” Amy said feeling more than a little overwhelmed, she'd been under the impression she'd got at least another week to complete her task.

“Well we're telling you know,” Jenny Himesaki pointed out menacingly.

“Don't I know you from somewhere?” Jenny Boyle asked as she looked at Amy closely.

“No!” Amy replied sharply.

“Hey girls!” Jenny Rangan called for order, “We've got a job of work to do, this isn't a school outing, this is a pirate raid.”

“ARRRRRR!” agreed the other three Jennys.

“Great Mother,” Amy muttered under her breath; unfortunately the Great Mother was too busy giggling to help out a baffled witch.

“Right,” Jenny Rangan sounded more business like than her sisters, “my information is that you know of a way into the planetary defence headquarters.”

“I do,” Amy agreed as she started to wonder if they should be talking about Planetary Defence Headquarters out here in the open, “should we be standing around in the open like this?”

“She has a point,” Jenny Boyle agreed.

As one woman the five pirates shuffled off into the shelter of a stack of crates. Once in the cover provided by the crates, Amy noticed the heavy looking kit bags piled on the ground.

“Okay,” Jenny Rangan turned to Amy, “how do we get in?”

“Well,” Amy began; she couldn't help thinking that if she worked this right she could send these jokers on their way and be in bed with Stella before the shooting started, “there's an ancient sewer that leads right under the castle, its not guarded.”

“Ancient sewer?” Jenny Himesaki asked uncertainly, “How ancient?”

“Hasn't been used in over a hundred years,” Amy reassured the suddenly nervous pirate girl.

“And its not guarded?” Jenny Huber asked.

“Nope, I checked,” Amy nodded, “and the out flow end is uncovered at low tide which is in...” she checked her pad, “...thirty-seven minutes.”

“Good!” Jenny Rangan smiled, “That gives us enough time to get changed, what's the surface of the bay like, is it mud or what?”

“Stone and shingle,” Amy replied, “you'll have no problem walking to the opening and it shouldn't take more than an hour to get there and back.”

“And the tide comes in when?” Jenny Himesaki wanted to know.

“Four and a half hours,” Amy replied as she calculated how long it would take her to find her way to Stella's bed.

“Great!” Jenny Rangan exclaimed.

“AAARRRRR!” cheered the other three Jennys.

“Why me?” Amy asked an uncaring universe quietly before saying in a louder voice, “Right, I'll just point you in the right direction then I'll be off...you know how its is, places to go, girls to go to bed with...”

“Off?” Jenny Rangan asked.

“You're not thinking of leaving are you?” Jenny Himesaki asked as her hand drifted towards the hilt of a knife that was half concealed under her jacket.

“Because that would be a shame,” Jenny Boyle pointed out.

“And a mistake...” Jenny Huber added, “...a very bloody and painful mistake.”

“Gulp,” gulped Amy, she couldn't use her magics on the four pirate Jennys because she could feel the powerful protective charms they all wore; her spells might work, but then again they might not, she didn't want to risk finding out, “Look, I'm a witch not a commando,” Amy tried an appeal to reason, but all she saw was four grim faces all turned towards her, “Okay, I suppose one night away from my girlfriend won't hurt.”

“Good,” beamed Jenny Rangan as she picked up one of the kit bags, “I knew you'd see sense...we brought a spare combat environment suit for you...you're about a size twelve, right?”

“Oh Mother...” Amy wailed miserably.

0=0=0=0

**About half an hour later.**

Watching as the four Pirate Jennys changed into their combat environment suits, Amy started to get a very bad feeling about her sister pirates competence. The girls, because that was what they were, none of them looked or sounded more than eighteen or nineteen, didn't seem to be very familiar with their equipment.

“Erm,” Amy began as she started to put on her own CES; unlike the Jennys she was quite familiar with how to put it on, for a start it was way easier than putting on a vacuum suit, “Just how long have you girls been pirates?”

“Ages,” Jenny Rangan reassured her as she tried to puzzle out how to attach her helmet to the rest of her suit.

“At least six weeks,” agreed Jenny Himesaki, she was attempting to get her head up display to work.

“At least,” nodded Jenny Huber taking a sub-machine gun from her kit bag and looking at it as if she'd never seen one before in her life.

“We're quick learners,” Jenny Boyle explained as she zipped up the front of her suit.

“Oh Great Mother,” Amy gave a despairing sigh, “Six weeks huh?”

“Yeah,” chorused the novice pirates.

“So how come you've been sent on this mission,” Amy was pretty sure that the success or failure of the raid depended on the Planetary Defence Headquarters being blown to kingdom-come before any pirates entered orbit; so why had these girl scouts been sent instead of a hard bitten special forces team? 

“Lucky, I suppose,” Jenny Rangan shrugged, she appeared to have worked out how her helmet was connected to her suit because she now had it on her head.

“Yeah,” agreed, Jenny Huber, “everyone said we were really lucky to get this job.”

“Okay....” Amy really didn't like what she was hearing, but there was still hope, perhaps these girls had been in their planetary militia before becoming pirates. “So what did you girls do before you became pirates?”

“Oh we worked in an office as data input clerks,” Jenny Boyle replied.

“Yeah,” Jenny Himesaki continued, “it was like so totally boring, so we decided to run away and join a pirate gang!”

“Oh, Great Mother...” Amy groaned in horror.

“What's wrong?” Jenny Rangan asked with a frown.

“Yeah you act like we can't pull this off,” Jenny Huber added.

“We're all going to die,” Amy muttered before looking at the girls again, “You do know how dangerous being a pirate is, don't you?” the Pirate Jennys looked at her blankly, “I mean even if you don't get killed on a raid or a bar fight, if the Alliance catches you, you'll be breathing vacuum in no time flat!”

“But that's not going to happen to us,” Jenny Boyle pointed out confidently.

“No,” agreed Jenny Rangan, “we know what we're doing...”

“You could have fooled me,” Amy said under her breath.

“And anyway we've got you to help us,” Jenny Himesaki smiled brightly.

“Oh Goddess help me,” Amy groaned once again; just at that moment several thoughts were going through her mind, the least of which was; why me? “Okay, tell me just how you four geniuses are supposed to take out that castle,” Amy pointed at the great stone edifice across the bay.

“Oh that's easy,” Jenny Boyle started to explain.

“We've got this,” Jenny Huber kicked a large square pack that had been lying on the ground all this time unnoticed by Amy.

“And that is...?” Amy couldn't wait to hear what 'this' was.

“It's a thermal bomb,” Jenny Rangan explained brightly.

“That's a new one on me,” Amy stood with her hands on her hips waiting for an explanation, “what's a Thermal Bomb?”

0=0=0=0

**A Short Time Later.**

“You do realise that you've totally been sent here to die, don't you?” Amy told the Jennys as she led them across the bay towards the outlet of the sewer.

It had also occurred to Amy that as she'd been forced to accompany the girls she'd been betrayed too and was expected to die. Try as she might she couldn't think of anyone she'd pissed off that badly that they'd want her dead. But it now seemed obvious to her that someone wanted her to die with these young women. Why else had the Jennys been given such powerful protection from magic? The Andersworlders had few witches and those they did have wouldn't warrant such heavy weight protection.

“What do you mean?” Jenny Rangan asked.

“Oh come on think about it,” Amy replied, “Four combat virgins are sent on a mission you'd expect to be carried out by veterans. You're told to take me with you when there's really no reason for me to be anywhere near that bomb when it goes off,” Amy gestured to the bomb Jennys Huber and Boyle were carrying, “and why have you got those charms, huh?”

“They said that the locals had planted magical booby traps,” Jenny Himesaki explained.

“No, I never said anything about magical booby traps!” Amy snapped back, “They're to mess with my magic so I can't use it on you four morons!”

“We're not morons!” Jenny Rangan replied indignantly.

“No you're not,” Amy conceded, “no, that would be an insult to morons...now shut up and let me try and think of a way so we can get out of this alive.”

They were nearing the end of the sewer now so Amy didn't have much time to think of a way out of her present situation. It would help if she knew who was out to get her, but she didn't. As she saw it she could plant the bomb and get reduced to a fine ash when it went off; she'd checked the fuse earlier and found it had been doctored. Instead of minutes to get away they'd only have seconds which wouldn't be enough time to get away, unless...

“Take those charms off,” Amy ordered as they came to the end of the sewer.

“But...” Jenny Rangan began but was silenced by an angry witch.

“DO IT!” Amy's voice was like thunder and she seemed to loom menacingly over the four Pirate Jennys; frighten half to death the girls obeyed, “Now throw them away.” Amy watched as the girls reluctantly threw their charms as far away as they could, “Now get back to shore and wait for me where we first met, okay?”

“What's going on?” Jenny Himesaki wanted to know.

“Look I think someone’s trying to kill me and you were going to be collateral damage,” Amy explained as she gestured to the bomb, “the fuse on that thing has been tampered with, you might think you've got forty-five minutes to get away when in fact you've only got forty-five seconds!”

The four Jennys gave each other worried glances; Amy could tell that they didn't completely believe her but they were starting to have their doubts.

“Look,” Amy tried to sound reassuring, “I'll plant the bomb while you get to safety...now get!”

“But...” Jenny Rangan started to say something but Amy went all mega witch on her.

“GET!” Amy pointed towards the shore.

Moments later Amy found herself standing on the wet shingle watching the four Pirate Jennys run towards the shore. It would take the girls maybe fifteen minutes to get to safety, Amy decided to give them twenty just to be safe. When the girls were out of the way, she'd teleport herself and the bomb into the castle, set the fuse and then teleport herself to safety. It had occurred to her to ask why who ever was trying to kill her hadn't put some magical protection on the bomb. Turning to look at the bomb, Amy eyed it suspiciously. Seconds later she was kneeling in the sea water checking the bomb out. Apart from the fuse being tampered with there didn't appear to be anything else wrong, but then she wasn't an expert on bombs. Standing up again, Amy checked her pad, the Jennys should be far enough away not to be caught in the explosion. Slowing her breathing, Amy prepared herself to cast her teleportation spell. Nothing could go wrong, which was just a little worrying as the last couple of times she'd cast any teleportation spells she'd ended up being moved through time as well as space.

“Well,” Amy told herself quietly, “nothing ventured nothing gained...and when I find out who's trying to kill me, death will be the least of their worries...”

A moment later both Amy and the bomb had vanished.

0=0=0=0


	9. Chapter 9

_Then just before noon there'll be hundreds of women  
Coming up off that ghostly freighter.  
And they're moving in the shadows where no-one can see  
And they're chaining up the people and they're bringing them to me  
Asking me, 'Kill 'em now or later?'  
Asking me, 'Kill 'em now or later?'  
Noon on the clock and so still on the dock,  
You could hear a foghorn miles away,  
In the quiet of death I'll say, 'kill 'em now!'  
And they'll pile up the bodies and I'll say, 'Hoopla!'_

**The Governor's Mansion.**

Lying asleep in bed (by herself) Stella found herself being woken up by what had to be the brightest flash of lightning and loudest clap of thunder she'd ever seen or heard. Rolling onto her back as she blinked her eyes open, Stella began to frown; the 'lightning' was going on way longer than any normal lightning should and without all the flickering that normally accompanied flashes of lightning. The thunder, however, sounded like it was fading away, but it was still going on longer than was normal. Wanting to find out what was happening, she threw back her covers, sat up and reached for her robe.

The 'lightning' was still going on giving her enough light to see by even with the curtains closed. The thunder had by now faded to a background rumble, it was at this point Stella decided that this wasn't some sort of freak weather event and that something seriously woman-made must have happened. Swinging her long, shapely legs over the side of her bed, she placed her dainty feet on the floor and stood up. Shivering slightly in the sea breeze, that wafted in through the window, she felt the goosebumps rise on her skin. As she habitually slept in the nude, she quickly put on her long white synthetic-silk robe. Hurrying on bare feet over to the window she threw the curtains open and stared out in shock at the sight that greeted her eyes.

Her room at the Old Governor's Mansion looked out over the bay containing the harbour. On the opposite headland from the harbour where the old demon's castle should stand was a large, glowing crater. Smoke billowed up into the air as the light from many fires reflected off the bases of the smoke clouds. Closer at hand, Stella could see that a lot of fires had started on the dock front some of which looked pretty serious and were starting to move inland, driven on by the breeze coming off the sea. Listening carefully, she could just make out the sounds of alarms and the sirens of emergency vehicles as they made their way towards the seat of the disaster.

Frozen to the spot Stella continued to gaze in fascination out at a world seemingly gone mad, she tried to work out what had happened, obviously the castle (now used as the planetary defence headquarters) had blown up. There was literally nothing left of the old stone fortress, just a big hole, so big in fact that in places the edge of the crater had intersected with the sea. Where this had happened the sea tried to rush in and flood the crater but it was held back by the intense heat of whatever it was that had caused the explosion. Great clouds of billowing steam rose into the air to mix with the clouds of smoke, Stella also fancied that she heard the roaring of the sea as it turned to steam, but she was mistaken.

The roaring that she could hear wasn't the sea turning to steam, it was in fact the roar of many engines as attack craft streaked in over the horizon and turned towards the city. The movement of these mysterious craft caught Stella's attention and she turned her head to watch as half a dozen craft flashed over the city heading inland. No sooner than the first craft had passed over her head than came the sound of multiple explosions from the heart of Porto Bello itself. Jerking her head around to see, she saw dozens of explosions near the centre of the city. Her mind told her that the aircraft must have dropped bombs on the town, but why?

No sooner had these events registered in her mind that Stella saw the tracks of missiles heading towards the docks. Moments later the missiles exploded sending ships and wreckage high into the air. Shocked by what was happening, she realised that the volley of missiles had made a perfect hit on the headquarters of the Porto Bello Coast Guard. The building and any Coast Guard cutters that were in port were now just burning, twisted, pieces of metal, plastic and concrete.

Flinching away from the explosions, Stella crouched behind the poor protection of the mansion's wall as, fascinated in spite of herself, she continued to watch the destruction of the city. This time as the attackers flew over the city, missiles rose from the depths of the town itself and chased after the aircraft, obviously the defenders were trying to fight back. Two missiles hit their targets and the flying craft exploded their wreckage causing even more destruction as it fell to ground. Fortunately or unfortunately the other missiles missed their targets as they were distracted by decoys or simply lost their locks on their targets before plummeting to the ground.

As Stella watched a third wave of attackers flew in from out to sea. These aircraft fired more missiles which flashed at impossibly high speed towards the points from where the defensive missiles had been fired. Seeing the danger the defending crews fired off all their remaining missiles before they were destroyed in their launching tubes. But it was to no avail, the missiles failed to get a lock on any of the attackers and flew out to sea where they either exploded in the air or crashed into the water. The missiles fired by the attackers had better luck however, they hit the launch sites with pin point accuracy causing more explosions to wreak havoc in the heart of the city.

From her hiding place, Stella could see the attack craft circle back towards the city and appear to attack locations seemingly at random. Wondering what the hell was going on, Stella also wondered what the hell she should do. She knew what her character, 'Space Girl' would do; she'd run to her ship and take on the attackers whatever the odds. But, as Stella was fed up with telling people, she wasn't 'Space Girl' her ship was just a computer program, it didn't actually exist and she was just an actress (a soon to be washed up actress at that) not a super-secret-slayer-spy, defender of the weak and oppressed. So she remained sitting on the floor staring out of the window at all the death and destruction down in the city. Not once did she wonder, as she drew her robe more tightly around herself against the morning chill, why the mansion hadn't been targeted.

0=0=0=0

**Porto Bello Docks.**

“WHAT THE FECK!” Amy yelled, but could still hardly hear herself having been deafened by the sound of the explosion.

Having planted the bomb, Amy had set the fuse for sixty minutes before teleporting out of the castle. As she'd suspected the bomb exploded a mere sixty seconds later, just after she'd reappeared on the dock side. Materialising, Amy had just enough time to register where she was before the bomb went off. Blown off her feet, she found herself flying through the air only coming to a halt when she crashed into a low concrete wall. Groaning as she bounced off the wall to lie on the cobbles of the old dock side road, she looked back towards where the castle had been only moments before. Now instead of the forbidding granite walls of the old castle there was a column of fire and smoke reaching thousands of feet up into the sky.

Still numbed by the effects of the explosion and being hurled into a concrete wall, Amy didn't notice the wave of dirty sea water until it hit the side of the docks. Water, foam, pieces of boat and ship flew into the air as the wave broke against the dock side. Watching in abject terror as the mixture of dirty, brown water and wreckage flew into the air, Amy managed to stagger to her feet and throw herself over the wall and into cover. Had she not been wearing a Combat Environment Suit she would have been seriously injured when she'd hit the wall. As it was she was only stunned and was able to get over the wall as pieces of wreckage landed where she'd just been lying. As it was the CES had to save her again by preventing her from drowning as the sea water flooded the dock side.

Eventually the water receded and Amy was able to pull herself to her feet. Hanging onto the wall for support, she looked around at the devastated docks and water front, there didn't appear to be a single building left undamaged. Now the danger of drowning or having heavy objects falling on her head had past, she took off her helmet and pushed back the wet hair from her face, the CES wasn't designed as a diving suit so it tended to let in water, but it had kept her alive for which she was grateful...it would also allow her to hunt down whoever was trying to kill her so she could kill them.

The explosion still roared from across the bay as the smoke and flame from the explosion formed into the familiar mushroom cloud all really big explosions produce. The suit's systems weren't warning her of any radiation hazard so Amy reasoned that the bomb hadn't been a nuclear one, she was safe from radiation at least. Her ears still ringing from the sound of the explosion, she didn't notice the attack craft until they flew over her head leaving clusters of mini-bombs behind them. The bombs exploded about twelve feet up in the air spraying shrapnel in all directions. Once again Amy found herself cowering for cover behind the wall as razor sharp pieces of hot metal filled the air around her. Before the cluster bombs had even stopped exploding, Amy felt more than heard the heavier explosions of larger weapons as they crashed into buildings reducing them to piles of smoking rubble. Lying there in the dust and smoke with all hell going off around and above her, Amy kept her grasp on her sanity by imagining all the things she was going to do to whoever was trying to kill her. Someone was going to pay big-time for all this.

0=0=0=0

**The Governor's Mansion.**

Rosy fingered dawn was just breaking over the smoking ruins of Porto Bello as Stella noticed there were no more explosions going off and the attack craft appeared to have all flown away. The air attack had lasted about two hours with the attack craft apparently just flying over Porto Bello and attacking things at random. Any attempt at an organised defence had ended long ago and the attackers appeared to be able to fly around with impunity. Now, as Stella stretched cramped muscles, everything had gone quiet, or at least relatively so, her numbed ears could still hear secondary explosions and the sounds made by the fires as they consumed the city.

Her first thought was that the Shedu had somehow found their way to Andersworld and attacked it, but that didn't make sense. Even with FTL drives the journey from Shedu held space would take months and even if the Shedu knew the location of Andersworld there was no guarantee that they could find it; long range astrogation wasn't an exact science. No this attack was much more likely to be the work of some demonic foe possibly with the help of renegade humans.

Pushing herself to her feet, Stella suddenly realised that she needed to visit the 'little-girl's-room' and visit it pretty damn quickly too. Making her way across her room, Stella noted that although the mansion had received superficial damage that caused the air to fill with dust and several light fittings to fall from the ceiling, the building hadn't been seriously targeted, for which Stella was mightily grateful.

Coming out of the bathroom minutes later, Stella went back to her position over by the window. When she looked out again she saw more aircraft fly in from out at sea. Crouching down into cover once more, Stella realised that these craft weren't attack craft, they were just too big. No these were transports and very big transports they were too. Counting them as they were now moving slowly enough to be closely observed, Stella saw there were twelve of them flying in tight formation towards the ruins of the city. Six broke off from the others and started to lose altitude, it was obvious they were coming into land.

It was then that Stella realised why the attack craft had attacked seemingly random targets. They had in fact been blasting landing zones for the transports between the buildings. Watching, Stella saw the transports sink through the smoke to land amongst the ruins of the city. Most of the transports landed where she couldn't see, but one landed less than half-a-mile away in what had been a park and sports ground. Staring captivated by the sight, Stella saw the transport come to rest amidst the shattered trees of the park, she heard its engines start to power down and then with growing concern she saw the doors to the craft's cargo bays start to open. Before the doors were even fully open she saw figures, human figures jump down from the transport and run to take up defensive positions around the craft.

As Stella watched, more and more 'soldiers' appeared, formed into tactical formations and started to move into the built up areas surrounding the park. Shocked into inactivity, Stella at first didn't realise that she was in danger. However, it only took her a few more moments to realise that some of the soldiers were heading her way and the odd crackling sound she could hear was in fact small arms fire.

Stung into activity, Stella suddenly realised that perhaps a slinky, white, synthetic-silk robe wasn't the best choice for combat survival. Tuning away from the window her eyes fell on her Space Girl outfit, it had been laid out the previous evening because it was going to be auctioned off at a charity diner being held tonight. Guessing that the diner would be at the very least postponed, Stella took off her robe and started to put on her costume. Strangely as she put on the white outfit, Stella started to feel a little braver even when she heard a burst of small arms fire coming from what sounded like right outside of her window. Still only half dressed Stella dashed back to look out of her window. In the court yard right below her window she could see a dozen or so soldiers dressed in mismatched pieces of uniform, however they were all clutching very business-like rifles so Stella ducked back into cover.

After zipping up the front of her suit, Stella was still putting on her boots when she heard a burst of firing that sounded as if it came from actually inside the building. Hopping over to the door of her room she opened it a crack only to see several of the mystery soldiers climb the stairs and start to spread out along the corridors leading to the rest of the floor. Ducking back into her room, Stella closed the door quietly and retreated towards her bathroom as she struggled to put on her boot, the left one had always been a bit tight and the wardrobe department never seemed to be able to fix it. Still only half way across her room she heard footsteps come to a halt outside her door; she saw the door handle move as someone tried to open it.

0=0=0=0


	10. Chapter 10

**Amy.**

Having lain in the inadequate protection of the wall for what felt like an eternity as attack craft zoomed backwards and forwards across the sky dropping bombs and firing missiles, Amy finally raised her head above the parapet. Smoke, dust and the sight of burning buildings greeted her eyes as she rose unsteadily to her feet. Looking around she found that she wasn't the only one to be emerging from shelter, from where she stood she could see a crowd of smoke and dust stained women stumble out into the open and look warily up into the sky. Her ears still ringing and her entire body trembling, Amy realised that just for now she was in no condition to use magic. Her hand reached automatically for the pistol in the holster strapped to her right thigh only to find the weapon gone.

“Damn-it!” Amy cursed as she eyed the locals fearfully; it would only take one of them to notice her CES and realise that it wasn't Andersworld issue and she'd find herself being chased by a baying mob out for blood and revenge.

Deciding that now would be a good time to be elsewhere, Amy turned and started to walk briskly away from the prospective angry mob. Having not gone more than fifty yards, she was faced with yet another new terror. Even her abused ears couldn't prevent her from hearing the roar of powerful engines as they approached the docks. Looking up it seemed to her that the sky was full of big, black transports. Dodging into the cover of a wrecked air-car, Amy crouched down before looking back up at the craft. Sighing a small sigh of relief she recognised the vessels as assault shuttles, the type most commonly used by pirates to land troops or board freighters.

Just for a moment Amy thought that all her troubles were over. Once the shuttles had landed she'd soon be back in the welcoming bosom of the pirate sisterhood. It was only after she'd stood up to get a better view of where the closest shuttle was landing that she remembered that someone on her own side was out to kill her. Ducking back into cover, she wondered what she was supposed to do now? If she went to welcome the landing parties she could just as easily be shot as greeted as a friend, what she needed was some back up, something to make it look as if she held some authority. A few hard bitten, veteran pirates, armed to the teeth and willing to cut throats at her merest whim would come in useful just about now...

“Miz Madison!” came a voice out of the smoke and dust; Amy recognised the voice and sighed heavily, “Miz Madison, is that you?”

...or failing hard bitten, veteran pirates, armed to the teeth and willing to cut throats at her ‘merest whim’, four teenage girls who at least had their own personal weapons with them would do at a pinch.

0=0=0=0

**Stella.**

Closing the door quickly Stella winced at the noise the lock made as it engaged, the pirates were bound to have heard it. Looking around her suite, she desperately searched for somewhere to hide or run to; going over to the window she looked out only to see three or four pirates guarding the courtyard below. Even if the pirates hadn't been there she couldn't have jumped or climbed down, the window was too high and the walls too smooth and as she so often told people, she was an actress not a commando.

Turning her head at the sound of someone trying to open the door, Stella saw the handle move, any second now the pirates would be inside the room, no doubt intent on doing vile and unspeakable things to her defenceless and very sexy body; after all these were pirates who were known to do vile and unspeakable things to young attractive starlets like herself. Watching in mounting terror, Stella saw the door handle move and then relaxed as it stopped, thinking that the pirates had given up in their quest to slake their perverted lusts, she began to relax only to scream in shock and fear as one of the pirates shot out the lock. Ducking back into her bathroom, Stella looked around frantically hoping to find a weapon to defend her honour.

0=0=0=0

Cautiously entering the room, Dread Pirate Zaria, remembered the old saying about how there were old pirates and bold pirates but no old, bold pirates; she'd not reached the age of twenty-seven by not doing anything stupidly brave, no she had been careful all her pirate life so she kept her rifle up and ready to blast anyone or anything that might attack her. Relaxing a little when she saw that the room was unoccupied she turned her head to look at her sister in piracy and bed, she raised a questioning eyebrow.

“I'm still getting a heat signature,” Not So Dread Pirate Jayda replied to her sister pirate's unasked question; unlike her friend and lover, her rifle was hanging from its strap over her shoulder, while in her hand she held a scanning device.

“Where away?” Zaria asked as she covered the room with her weapon.

“Just over three yards,” Jayda said as she gestured to the closed door about three yards away from her present position.

“Come out, come out wherever you are,” Zaria called softly as she trod on silent feet closing the distance to the door, glancing over at Jayda who'd by now returned the scanner to its place on her equipment belt and had once again taken up her rifle, she smiled evilly, “We don't mean you any harm,” Zaria tried to keep any amusement out of her voice as she reached for the door handle, “we promise not to do vile and unspeakable things to you...”

Turning the handle, Zaria smiled as she found the door unlocked, nodding to her friend she readied herself to burst into the room beyond. One a silent count of three, Zaria kicked the door open and burst into the bathroom beyond, her rifle at the ready. No sooner was she in the room than she received the full force of the shower's shower head right in the face. Coughing and spluttering as the hot water was sprayed into her mouth and eyes, she stumbled backwards, narrowly avoiding knocking Jayda over as a figure in a white body suit rushed by her heading towards the suite's main door. Avoiding being knocked for six, Jayda reacted quickly and jabbed the white suited figure in the belly with the muzzle of her rifle. Jumping out of the way as the white figure fell to her knees and started to retch and groan, Jayda stepped back and covered her captive with her rifle.

“GOTCHA!” Jayda cried out in triumph before looking over to where her friend was trying to get the water out of her eyes, “You alright there Zar?”

“I'm fine, you get the bitch?” Zaria replied as she climbed back to her feet.

“Yeah I've...AAGH!” Jayda cried as she hopped away from her captive clutching at her right shin.

Having kicked one of her captures in the shin, Stella started to crawl at high speed across the floor towards the supposed safety of the door.

“GRAB 'ER!” Jayda cried as she tried to hop in pursuit, “Don't let 'er escape!”

“I'll get 'er!” Zaria yelled as she launched herself across the room to land on top of the fast moving Stella.

“AAAGH!” both women cried as they rolled across the floor in a tangle of arms and legs.

Breaking free for a moment, Stella regained her feet and made another attempt to dash for the door.

“No you don't!” Zaria called as she tackled the runaway's legs holding them firmly in her arms it was at this point Jayda reached the struggling couple and grabbed Stella by her long, blue hair.

“OWWW!” Stella screamed as she yanked her hair from the pirate's grasp leaving the woman holding onto a handful of blue hair.

Free again, Stella sprinted for the door, in moments she found herself out in the corridor, looking left and then right, she ran off down the right hand corridor desperately trying to remember if this was the right direction to go to get outside. Unfortunately the two pirates were in hot pursuit and saw her duck into a room further along the passageway. Slowing down and moving cautiously with their weapons held at the ready in front of them, Zaria and Jayda entered the room to find it apparently empty. Quickly Jayda unclipped her scanner and looked at the screen, she smiled and nodded at her companion.

“We know you're in here, poppet,” Jayda called as she signalled her partner to go more to the right, “come out and we promise we won't hurt you...well, not much anyway”

“We _will_ find you, poppet,” Zaria added as the two pirates advanced on the still closed curtains.

Reaching out the pirates grasped the folds of the curtains and swiftly jerked them open to find Stella hiding behind them.

“Hello, poppet,” Zaria smirked as she watched Stella's enhanced breasts rise and fall as she breathed deeply recovering from her exertions.

“Please don't kill me, or rape me or do anything to me,” Stella begged as she cowered before the two heavily armed pirates.

“Why shouldn't we?” Jayda asked reasonably, before laughing in the blue haired girl's face, “I mean we've not done anything vile or unspeakable to anyone for ages, 'ave we Zar?”

“You're right, Jay,” Zaria agreed as she reached out and squeezed Stella's breast, “it's been so long that I've almost forgotten how.”

“Me too,” Jayda agreed as she squeezed Stella's other breast, “but I'm sure we'll get the 'ang of it again, won't we, Zar?”

“Aye,” Zaria smiled as she drew a small cry of pain from Stella's lips as she squeezed her breast harder.

“Pleeeez...” Stella sobbed as she tried to think of some way of saving herself; having been captured by pirates once before, Stella knew that the best way of getting relatively good treatment off pirates was to convince them you were more valuable to them alive and un-sexually tortured than dead or hanging by your tits from a hook in the ceiling.

“Please what?” Jayda moved her hand and started to unzip Stella's suit; she liked captives with large breasts it gave her so much more to work with.

“Please don't hurt me,” Stella sobbed, “I'm the Governor's daughter I'm worth more in ransom if I'm unharmed.”

“Oh fuck!” Jayda let go of Stella as if she'd turned red hot, “You sure?”

“YES!” Stella nodded her head eagerly, “Mommy is the District Governor!”

“What the fuck?” Zaria shrugged still holding on to her captive's breast, “We can still have a little fun as long as we don't mark her up too much, what'd'y'say?” 

“Sounds good to me,” Jayda agreed eagerly as she once again started to unzip Stella's suit.

“Par...Parley!” Stella cried out in a last ditch attempt at saving herself; not only had she been captured by pirates before, but she'd also done a lot of reading into pirate customs and traditions.

“What!?” Zaria couldn't believe her earring heavy ears.

“Parley!” Stella repeated urgently, “I invoke the right of parley!” she added as the pirates hesitated, “According to the Code of the Sisterhood, set down by the pirates Misaki and Mukopadhyay, you must take me to your Captain!”

“I know the code,” Zaria grumbled as the expectation of hours of fun sexually torturing their captive receded in front of her eyes.

“If an adversary demands parley,” Stella explained pushing her advantage, “you can't do them any harm until the parley is completed.”

“It would appear you know the code too,” Zaria muttered all the time wondering how the girl knew so much about pirate lore.

“To The First with the code!” Jayda snapped angrily, as she drew a long and very sharp looking knife, “Lets just torture her...”

“No!” Zaria held her partner back, “She wants to be taken to the Captain, and she'll go without a fuss?” she looked questioningly at Stella, “Right?”

“No fuss,” agreed Stella as she zipped her body suit right back up to her neck.

“Then we must honour the code,” Zaria pointed out reluctantly.

“Whatever...” Jayda sighed as she sheathed her knife, adding, “...y'know, Zar, sometimes you're no fun at all.”

0=0=0=0

**Amy.**

The four Pirate Jennys stood in a line in front of Amy, they at least appeared to have escaped serious injury and had managed to keep hold of most of their equipment.

“Okay,” Amy said tiredly; she'd just realised she'd been awake for nearly twenty-four hours, “what's your story?”

“After leaving you,” Jenny Rangan began to explain, “we ran back to shore...”

“...we found a bar that was still open and went inside to discuss what we should do next,” Jenny Huber added.

Wondering how the four novice pirates dressed in their CESs and loaded down with weapons had gone unnoticed, she soon had her questions answered.

“No sooner had we ordered our drinks,” Jenny Boyle continued, “than the bomb went off and the world fell apart around us!”

“We spent the rest of the time, up until about an hour ago hiding in a basement,” Jenny Himesaki completed the tale of their adventures, “What happened to you?”

“Like I say,” Amy really wanted to sit down, maybe go home and have a long hot shower before going to bed; but showers and beds looked a long way off, “someone's trying to kill me and let me remind you that they were willing to see you dead too and I'm betting you've done no one any harm?”

The four Pirate Jennys shook their collective heads and looked at Amy with fear and hurt in their eyes.

“What shall we do?” Jenny Rangan asked sounding like a frightened six year old.

“First give me your pistol,” Amy held out her hand and the girl obediently handed over her sidearm.

Checking the weapon as she'd been taught, Amy saw that it was a standard model and the spare magazines still in the pouches of her CES would fit the weapon. After slipping the pistol into her holster, she looked at the girls in front of her and tried for a reassuring smile. By the looks on the faces of her new bodyguard it hadn't really had the desired effect.

“Right!” Amy said in what she hoped was a commanding voice, this time the girls seemed to brace up almost to attention, “Do you want to find out who tried to kill you and then exact bloody revenge?”

“Erm...yes?” the Pirate Jennys replied hesitantly.

“Well do you?” Amy demanded, adding despairingly, “And try to at least sound like pirates.”

“ARRRRRR!” this time the girls were firmer in their conviction and almost sounded blood thirsty.

“Good,” Amy smiled; as she saw it she had a number of objectives, first and foremost, stay alive. Second find out who was trying to kill her and kill them first. Thirdly find Stella and make sure she was safe; but first there was some minor revenge that needed taking care of close at hand. “Okay,” she smiled at the Pirate Jennys, “Follow me and not only will you have your revenge but you'll also end the day as famous pirates, how do you like them apples?”

“ARRRRRRR!” cheered the girls again as they brandished their weapons in the air.

“What's an apple?” Jenny Huber asked her friends quietly.

“Oh, goddess help me,” Amy groaned casting her eyes heavenward.

0=0=0=0


	11. Chapter 11

**Amy.**

“Darn...” Amy sighed quietly as she looked down into the smoking hole that had once been the Dockview Hotel.

The building must have received a direct hit from a bomb or missile, if they'd been at home Mistress Sybil and Bazilla must have been killed instantly. Having been tormented by the two women during the short time she’d worked at the hotel, she'd been hoping for a little payback. But as the two women were most likely dead, Amy didn't feel too bad about missing out on her fun. The women had been really mean to her and in her opinion they'd deserved to die, it was just unfortunate that it had probably been a quick death.

Looking up and down the street, Amy noticed that the hotel had been the only building in the row of buildings that had been hit and she began to wonder why. Why had someone felt that it was so important to blow up this building? Why not flatten the entire street? What was so special about this cut-price hotel? The only thing that Amy could come up with that made this cheap hotel special was the fact that she'd worked and lived there; it was then that she realised what must have happened. Whoever wanted her dead had been covering all her bases. Just in case Amy had not accompanied the Pirate Jennys to the castle and been blown up by the booby-trapped bomb, 'whoever' had targeted the place were she was supposed to be sleeping. But she hadn't been there, even if she'd not been with the Pirate Jennys, Amy had been spending most of her nights with Stella, either at the old Governor's Mansion or at one of the many guest houses in the area.

“Oh my goddess!” Amy gasped as she turned away from the ruins and ran to a point on the other side of the street where she could see the old Mansion up on the hill where it overlooked the city, “Stella!?”

The Mansion appeared to be undamaged and Amy breathed a sigh of relief. The depth of her feelings for the actress surprised her and after a moment's thought, she started to reorder her priorities. Moving ‘finding Stella’ and making sure she was safe to the top of her list, she turned towards her bodyguards to see them all frowning at her.

“You alright, Miz?” Jenny Rangan asked.

“Yeah totally,” Amy replied sharply, “we need to get up to the Mansion.”

“Okay,” Jenny Rangan replied slowly, “is that where you think you'll be able to find whoever is trying to kill us?”

“Maybe,” Amy nodded, “come on, times awasting.”

Setting a brisk pace Amy started out in the direction of the Mansion, the Pirate Jennys following on behind her.

0=0=0=0

They'd not been walking for long and Amy had been using the time to worry; she worried about who was trying to kill her, she worried that she was so tied that she wouldn't be able to magic herself out of a wet paper bag. But, most of all, she worried about Stella. Once again Amy wondered at how attached she'd got to the girl in such a short a time, was this 'true love' she asked herself? Having had little experience with 'love' let alone ‘true love’, Amy didn't know; she'd loved her mom until she'd gone all weird and stolen her body; she'd loved her dad but that was probably just gratitude for him taking her in and looking after her after Buffy and Mr Giles had killed her insane mother. Thinking about it, Amy realised that she'd not 'loved' the few boys she'd gone out with at high school; and now when she really thought about it she recognised that she didn't love Etta; yes, she liked Etta, but she didn't love her. With Stella it was different. When she was apart from the actress she couldn't wait to see her again. When she did see her, her heart pounded in her chest, her breath came in short pants and she felt light headed...and when they made love, it wasn't just sex it was something more, something better, something deeper.

“Erm, Miz?” Jenny Himesaki's voice broke into Amy's thoughts.

“W-what?” Amy looked around to find herself and her personal pirates in a smoky, rubble strewn street, making their way slowly down the street towards them was a long line of prisoners.

The prisoners consisted of local women, mainly teenagers and younger woman each connected to the woman in front by a chain and collar, they also had their hands handcuffed behind their backs. A lot of the younger prisoners were crying and the older ones looked very apprehensive, they probably had some inkling of what their fate was to be. Amy found herself not really caring, while she'd been on Andersworld she'd found the locals arrogant and mean. Even Stella's fans had almost killed her in their eagerness to be near their idol, a crime that Amy couldn't and wouldn't let go unpunished.

“What's going on?” Jenny Himesaki gestured to the long line of prisoners and the guards escorting them, they were probably heading for one of the transports.

“Them?” Amy paused for a moment to let her eyes roam over the dejected women, “Prisoners, they'll be sold as slaves when the fleet gets back to port.” Amy’d seen this all before and wasn't too bothered about it, “Those that the pirates don't want will be sold elsewhere, some might even be sold to demons...”

“DEMONS!?” the Pirate Jennys exclaimed in horror.

“That's terrible,” gasped Jenny Huber.

“Awful,” agreed Jenny Rangan.

“Disgusting,” Jenny Himesaki added.

“How much do you get for a slave,” Jenny Boyle wanted to know, “are they sold at auction or what?”

“EWWWWW!” cried at least seventy-five percent of the Pirate Jennys.

“Auction usually,” Amy told Jenny Boyle, obviously this girl was making the transition from being a naïve teenager to being a real pirate, “Look,” Amy turned to the other Jennys, “we're like totally pirates, you know?”

The Pirate Jennys looked at each other uncertainly, the last twenty-four hours had come as a nasty shock to their collective systems and they were beginning to wonder if joining the Pirate Sisterhood had been such a good idea.

“We do all the vile and unspeakable stuff, it's like kinda totally expected” Amy pointed out, “we're Pirates not Girl Guides, why do you think the Alliance wants us all dead?”

“Dead?” gulped Jenny Himesaki.

“You know that if the Alliance totally catches you in arms you'll be sucking vacuum within twenty-four hours, or, if there's no vacuum handy you'll be hung on one of their new, special, low gravity scaffolds? It can take like hours to die, or so I'm told, slowly being strangled...”

A couple of the Jennys looked as if they were close to tears.

“No one said anything about that, Miz,” sniffed Jenny Himesaki, “we were told it was all fun and adventure.”

“No one said anything about being hung in low gravity,” sniffed Jenny Rangan, “all we were told about was all the gold we'd take home.”

“But none of that is going to happen, you're with me now,” Amy held out a little hope to the teenage pirates, she'd become really good a manipulating people since she'd arrived in the future. “Because now you have me to totally look out for you. I won't trick you into blowing yourselves up. Like I said, stick with me an' you'll be famous and rich...and more importantly...alive!”

The Pirate Jenny's unconsciously shuffled a little closer to Amy.

“You know,” Amy cast her eye over the line of prisoners as they walked down the street, “life for most of them won't be so bad, like most'll end up as servants, some might be sold to be whores a lot will end up as Pirate Wives...” 

“What about the ones sold to demons?” Jenny Himesaki asked.

“Well,” Amy shrugged, “there lives won't be so much fun, but at least it'll only be for a short time.”

“A short time?” Jenny Himesaki asked, “You mean the demons let them go after a while?”

“NO!” chorused the other Jennys who were getting to realise what being a pirate meant.

“Oh!” Jenny Himesaki looked wide eyed at her friends, “You mean...”

“Okay!” Amy didn't let Jenny Himesaki finish her thought out loud, “We've like spent enough time here. Remember, we're looking for the love of my life, so if anyone sees a really attractive blue haired woman with big boobs call out, okay?”

“Like that one?” Jenny Rangan pointed further up the street.

“W-w-what?” Amy stammered as she turned to follow Jenny's pointing finger.

Sure enough, coming down the street towards them were two very tough looking pirates and between them dressed in a figure hugging white body suit was Stella Stardust. Much to Amy's relief Stella didn't look hurt, a little dusty and smudged maybe but not hurt as far as she could tell. It didn't even look as if the pirates had cuffed Stella's hands behind her back, in fact it looked as if she was going with the pirates, if not willingly, then at least voluntarily. Coming up with a plan to free her lover, Amy turned to her girls.

“Come with me,” she told them quietly, “and totally follow my lead...and try to look tough!”

Marching up to the two pirates as if she owned the world, Amy glared at the three women.

“What's going on here?” she demanded as she gestured at Stella, “Where are you taking this woman?” 

“Who wants to know?” demanded the blonde pirate to Stella's right; both pirates appeared to be in their late twenties, one was blonde with startlingly blue eyes and light brown skin, while the other had coal-black hair, dark brown eyes and really pale skin, they were both well armed with assault rifles, pistols and knives, they looked very tough and capable.

“I do!” Amy snapped back before pointing at Stella, “This woman is my property.”

“Sez who?” the black haired pirate took a menacing step towards Amy.

“Sez me,” Amy replied not backing down and letting her hand fall to rest on the butt of her pistol.

“An' who are you if I may be so bold as to ask?” the blonde wanted to know taking a firmer grip on her rifle.

“Ship's Witch Amy Madison...” it was only after Amy had given her name that she realised that it might not have been such a good idea, apart from the Pirate Jennys she didn't know who she could trust.

“W-witch?” the blonde pirate looked uneasily at her partner and took a step away from Amy.

“Which Witch?” the black haired pirate wasn't so easily cowed, “What ship?”

“The Black Freighter,” Amy replied thinking, in for a penny in for a D’lah.

“Captain Flanagan's ship?” the dark haired pirate wanted to know.

“The same,” Amy took a step towards the pirate and looked her straight in the eye; it only took the pirate a couple of seconds to realise that trying to out stare a witch probably wasn't such a good idea and she backed down, “and you two are?”

“Dread Pirate Zaria,” Zaria drew herself up to more or less attention, she gestured to her dark haired friend, “this 'ere's Not-so-dread Pirate Jayda, we're both on the Natividad under Captain Felicia Hawkins.”

Amy took a moment to process this information while at the same time checking to see what her own pirates were doing. Glancing over her shoulder at the girls Amy was gratified to see them looking as vicious as they could which wasn't very, but it was good enough for now. It was at this point Stella took it into her head to say something.

“Oh Amy, am I glad to see you, do you know these people?” Stella took a step towards her lover but was brought up short by a stinging slap across the face.

“Who said you could speak, _slave_?” Amy demanded angrily as she glared down at the blue haired girl, hoping against hope that she'd go along with the fiction.

Sitting on her butt in the road where she'd been knocked, Stella held her cheek as she looked up with tear blurred eyes at the woman she'd thought had loved her. It was only then that she realised that her face didn't hurt, it should hurt, she told herself and if the blow had knocked her to the ground like it appeared to it should hurt, a lot! The slap had sounded as if Amy had put all her strength behind it; but it hadn't actually hurt, it was just then Stella remembered that she was an actress and maybe Amy was too.

“I'm sorry, Mistress,” Stella grovelled in the dust at Amy's feet.

“We found her in the old Mansion,” Zaria jerked her thumb over her shoulder as she explained, “she said she was the Governor's daughter an' claimed the right of 'Parley'.”

“We was just taking 'er to see Captain Hawkins before having a little fun with 'er,” Jayda added.

“There'll be no having 'fun' with my slave unless I totally say so,” Amy told the two veteran pirates, “and you...” she turned to look down at Stella before grabbing hold of her hair and pulling her to her feet again, “claiming you're the governor's daughter and asking for parley? Just who do you think you are? It'll be the agony booth for you when I get you home!”

“No, please Mistress,” Stella over-acted, “not the agony booth, pleeeeez!”

“Don't get lost in your part,” Amy whispered in Stella's ear as she pulled her up to stand next to her; she turned back to the two pirates, “What were your orders?”

“We was told to search the mansion for important an' valuable prisoners, Miz,” Zaria explained.

“And these orders came from...?” Amy wanted to know.

“Captain Hawkins, Miz.”

“Hmmm,” Amy replied giving herself a little time to think.

Captain Hawkins was known as a fairly trustworthy pirate as such things were measured in the pirating sisterhood. What was more, Amy was fairly sure she'd never met Captain Hawkins so it was unlikely that the good Captain would want her dead, Amy came to a snap decision.

“You two now work for me,” Amy told the pirates; while her own Pirate Jennys might look fierce, well at least constipated, what Amy really needed was a couple of pirates who knew how to kill people without hesitation.

“I don't know about that, Miz,” Zaria glanced at Jayda and got a supportive nod from her lover, “our contract is with Captain Hawkins.”

“I'll totally square it with Captain Hawkins,” Amy explained, “If you follow me I can promise you wealth enough so you can retire in a couple of years...I'll also need some killing done and these,” Amy glanced over to where her Jennys stood in a line, “They're only Jennys, although one I'm thinking of promoting to 'Pirate' and they're not very experienced.”

“You mind if I talk this over with Jayda?” Zaria asked.

“Go on, but like don't take too long,” Amy replied, she noticed that they were now all alone in the street the prisoners and their guards having moved on.

“What do you think?” Zaria asked as she and her partner walked a couple of paces away from the witch.

“Depends,” Jayda said with a calculating air.

“Depends?”

“Depends on how much money she's willing to part with,” Jayda replied.

“I'll ask,” Zaria nodded as she turned back to Amy and asked, “Just how much wealth are we takin' about 'ere?”

“Lots,” Amy called.

“Lots?”

“Oh...” Amy frantically tried to think how much 'lots' was in actual numbers, “...look if you become part of my bodyguard you'll be rewarded with enough cash for you to retire and live like Captains for the rest of your lives...”

“My old mum used to say,” Jayda spoke up, “that when things sounded too good to be true they usually were and to get a proper signed contract.”

“Contract?” Amy asked.

“Yep!” nodded Zaria and Jayda in unison.

“Okay how about this,” with a small puff of smoke a pirate contract appeared in Amy's hand, with any luck the pirates wouldn't notice how she'd winced as the red hot needles had lanced through her brain.

“Erm, lets see,” the two pirates advanced cautiously on Amy and took the contract from her out stretched hand.

The two women quickly read through the contract, it was a standard short term contract, which would allow Zaria and Jayda to work for Amy until the witch could talk the pirate's Captain into releasing them from their contract to her.

“Its all pretty standard,” Amy explained as she held onto Stella to stop herself from falling down, she really needed to sleep, “You can trust me, I'm a Witch!”

“Well,” Zaria glanced at Jayda and got an answering nod, “it looks like you've got two new pirates!”

“ARRRRRRRRRRRR!” chorused every one as the two new recruits signed the contract in blood or maybe red ink.

0=0=0=0

**Author's note:** To save confusion it should be pointed out that while Amy's pirates are all called 'Jenny', a Jenny is also the lowest rank in the pirate hierarchy. 


	12. Chapter 12

**Aboard the TASS Reluctant in orbit around Orban.**

Sipping her morning tea, Willow sat and watched Buffy over the rim of her teacup. Having recently completed a major overhaul and reprogramming of the Buffy-bot, Willow was still wondering if she'd done the right thing. So far Buffy appeared to be more stable than before and hadn't had a single 'glitch' since Willow had completed her maintenance. With her new programming Buffy should be more content and less likely to fall into the robotic version of depression like she had recently.

Having completely wiped Buffy's memories, basically Willow had returned the Buffy-bot to her factory settings, then she'd started to rebuild Buffy's programming; only this time Willow had not tried to disguise what the Buffy-bot was; now Buffy knew her real history and what she had been and what she was now. Gone were all the sub-programs containing fake memories of her past, now Buffy knew exactly what had happened to her since Dr Morbius had built her. 

However, Willow could not resist trying to make the Buffy-Bot as much like the Buffy that she remembered as she could, but, she still couldn't get the robot's voice and syntax quite right. Willow suspected that she never would, but she'd done the best she could. On the plus side, she’d made it so Buffy could feel (or at least mimic) emotions like love and friendship (not forgetting hate and dislike of course). Now Buffy could form relationships, even romantic relationships and there was now really no reason why Buffy-Bot couldn't fall in love and have a full and satisfying sexual relationship with any woman she chose; however, she still could never have children of her own. Other than that Buffy was as near 'human' as Willow could make her.

Once Willow had completed her work, she'd then 'locked' Buffy's programming so that even she couldn't change it again. Yes, Willow could still go in and repair any damage Buffy might receive, but even she wouldn't be able to change Buffy's basic programming. This was what was worrying her the most, what if she'd got it wrong? What if she'd made a mistake so that one day Buffy would turn into some sort of homicidal killing machine and try to take over the universe? What if Buffy didn't want to be her friend any-more?

Taking a deep breath, Willow knew that not to have locked even herself out of Buffy's systems would have been wrong. If she'd allowed herself to still be able to change the Buffy-bot's programming then Buffy was no more than a machine and not a living and growing lifeform even if she was made of living matter on a chassis made of various metal alloys, silicon and plastic. Even though Buffy still needed small amounts of bio-matter and water to maintain her physical appearance, she'd never age and she'd only 'die' when her power-pack ran down in about two hundred years time. But still at the back of Willow's mind she kept asking herself the same question over and over again...had she done the right thing? Of course there was no right answer to this question, she'd just have to wait and find out. Placing her teacup on the table in front of her, Willow noticed a shadow fall across its surface, looking up she saw her friend and colleague, Faith Lehane standing next to her table, a cup of steaming coffee in her hand.

“Hi Faith,” Willow smiled welcomingly, “sit down and...” it was then that she noticed the sad expression on Faith's face and how her eyes looked red and puffy, “...Faith!” Willow gasped, she'd never seen her friend look like this before, “Sit down, have you been crying? What's wrong?”

Pulling out a chair, Faith placed her coffee cup on the table before sitting down, she rested her elbows on the surface of the table and held her head in her hands. Tears fell onto the white tabletop as Faith sobbed quietly.

“Oh my goddess, Faith,” Willow couldn't believe what she was seeing, tough, strong, Faith Lehane, terror of all lowly space women in Star Force sitting next to her and crying like a little girl, “Tell me what's wrong.” Moving so that she was next to Faith, Willow put a comforting arm around Faith's shoulders, “Come on Faith, what could possibly be so bad that...”

“Cindy 'Dear Jane-ed' me...” Faith said between sobs.

“Oh...” Willow was at a loss as to what to say for a moment, “...oh,” she repeated slowly, “its worse than that.”

Faith and her partner Cindy had been married for seven or eight years they had two little girls back on Earth. As far as Willow knew, even with the long separations caused by Faith being in Star Force, their relationship had been rock solid; obviously she'd been wrong.

“What happened?” Willow asked.

Taking a deep breath, Faith lowered her hands, producing a screwed up tissue from the pouch on the belt of her uniform she wiped her eyes and blew her nose.

“It was bound to happen,” Faith explained soberly as she dabbed at her eyes, “I shoulda seen it coming what with all the separations...” she took another deep breath, “...y'know in the eight years we've been married I've been at home for what adds up to about two of them...I checked...I've missed so much of the kids growing up an' I'd promised m'self I'd be such a good mom...”

“Hey, Faithie,” Willow hugged Faith tightly not caring what the other crewers in the room might think, “maybe this is just a temporary thing, we could talk to the Captain and have you sent back to Earth on compassionate leave or something or...”

“Now hear this...Now hear this...” Tara, the ship's AI's voice came over the ship's comms system, she sounded very formal which was unusual for the computer, “All senior officers and department heads are to report to the bridge immediately. I repeat; all senior Officers and department heads are to report to the bridge immediately, that is all.”

“That sounds ominous,” Willow remarked as she slowly let go of Faith, “and may I say, so not good timing.”

“Time an' Star Force wait for no woman,” Faith said bitterly as she started to get up from the table.

“I say!” Buffy appeared at Faith's elbow, “What going on gals?” Willow winced, she'd definitely got Buffy's grammar and syntax way off, she was sounding more like a female Giles now. “Something wrong, Faith?” Buffy asked in a more recognisably Buffy way of speaking.

“She's had some real bad news Buffy,” Willow explained.

“Oh Lady!” Buffy moved to comfort Faith, “What is it, Cindy?” a look of real horror came to Buffy's face, “Not the kids surely?”

“We'll talk later,” Willow informed Buffy as she gestured to the door of the mess hall, “but now we've...”

“I know,” Buffy nodded, “I was wondering if I should totally come too?”

“Huh?” replied Willow.

“Well,” Buffy shrugged, “I’m like sort of a department head...y'know head of the galley an'all.”

“She has a point,” Faith forced a smile, “an' maybe this is some sort of cooking emergency.”

“I've heard sillier explanations,” Willow agreed before turning to look at Buffy, “okay, Petty Officer Summers, you'd better tag along.”

“Aye-aye, Lieutenant Rosenberg, ma'am!” Buffy gave Willow a cheeky grin and mock salute.

“You've unleashed a monster on the universe,” Faith whispered in Willow's ear.

“I heard that, Cots Lehane,” Buffy exclaimed in faux horror as they all headed towards the bridge, “I'm not a monster...” she said before adding very quietly to herself, “...unless someone made me into one!”

0=0=0=0

The Reluctant's bridge wasn't the best place to conduct a briefing but it was one of the largest spaces aboard ship. Even so with nearly half the ship's crew present it was very crampt. Entering via the main hatch, Willow looked around, catching the eye of Lt Jerri Farr she asked silently if the First Officer knew what was going on; the only reply she got was a shrug and a raised eyebrow when Jerri saw Buffy follow Willow and Faith onto the bridge.

“She _is_ in charge of the galley,” Willow explained after making her way over to where the First Officer stood.

“You think this is some sort of cooking emergency, then?” Jerri grinned.

“Who knows?” Willow replied with a shrug.

“What's going on?” Emma Ostrow, the ship's doctor asked as she joined Willow and Jerri, she noticed Buffy standing with Marie Youngerford the communications Petty Officer, “You don't think this is another cooking emergency do you?”

“Another?” chorused Willow and Jerri just before they were silenced by Tara's voice.

“Attention on deck!” Tara called and the crew braced to attention as Captain Adams came through the hatch, she paused to survey her crew before speaking.

“At ease Ladies,” Captain Adams ordered calmly, “I've called you all here because I think this sort of news should be given personally and not just broadcast over the ship's comms. When you get back to your departments you're to pass on what I'm about to say to your shipmates...” the Captain smiled, “...not that I think they'll need to hear it because they're no doubt listening in!”

A ripple of polite laughter greeted the captain's words.

“Now to business...” the Captain took a deep breath, “...at zero-eight-thirty, ships time I received new orders from Star Force Command. We are to part company with the TASS Indomitable and proceed at out best speed to make orbit around the tenth planet in the Andersworld system and join company with our sister ship, TASS Thunderchild and the Q-Ship, TASS Red Witch.” Captain Adams paused for a moment to gauge the reaction of her crew, “From there we are to proceed sun-wards and engage and destroy any pirate vessels that might challenge us, we'll be supported by other Star Force assets, but for several days, at least at first, we'll be working on our own.”

Once again Captain Adams paused to check the reaction of her crew, she was gratified to see a look of professional anticipation on the faces of the women in front of her, although Cots Lehane looked as if she'd been crying, Captain Adams made a mental note to ask her First Officer if there was something wrong, she didn't want to go into combat with her Chief of the Ship at anything less than one-hundred percent.

“The reason for us breaking off from our present pirate suppression duties is the news that a large pirate fleet has attacked Andersworld...” Captain Adams explained, “...at present we don't know exactly how many pirates we'll be facing. So far we've only had fragmentary reports, mainly from merchant captains who managed to get their ships under way as the pirates attacked, but these reports suggest that there are between twenty and thirty pirate ships operating around Andersworld.”

There were now gasps from the crew.

“Yes I know,” Captain Adams admitted, “for a while there will only be ourselves and the Thunderchild fighting twenty or thirty pirates...but...we are purpose built warships the pirates aren't. We will also have a Q-ship with a large contingent of Marines aboard. I intend to use the pirate's greed against them, so hopefully we'll only have to fight pirates one or two ships at a time.”

“Now,” Adams gave a long sigh as she finished what she was saying and before adding, “Ensign Mountshaft...”

“Ma'am!” Mountshaft braced to attention.

“Lay in a course for the tenth planet in the Andersworld system, you have the con...Miz Farr, Miz Rosenberg, if you'll join me in my cabin. The rest of you are dismissed to your duty stations, I want the Reluctant ready in all respects for combat by eighteen-hundred hours.”

“Attention on deck!” Tara's voice boomed out of the ship's comms system; the crew braced to attention and saluted the captain, before Tara added, “To your duties, dismiss!”

0=0=0=0

Back in her galley, Buffy sat for a moment as she decided what she needed to do. If it came to combat, which it sounded like it most certainly would, she'd be needed as part of Cots Lehane's security force. If that was the case she wouldn't have much, if any time, to cook the crew's meals. Before she went to the armoury to draw her hard-suit and weapons she'd need to close down the galley and put all the food replicators on automatic. Of course apart from a little protein and water she didn't need to eat but the crew did.

Taking her tool kit from the bulkhead where it was clipped, she opened it up and removed the 'universal tool' before opening up the first replicator. She'd give it one last fine adjustment before locking it into automatic mode. After that she'd clean up the galley and the mess hall and once all that was done she'd report to the armoury and Cots Lehane.

As she worked, Buffy wondered what had made Faith cry, her memories told her that it was almost totally unheard of for Faith to show such a strong emotion, which sort of worried her. But she was Buffy, she was stronger, faster than any mere slayer and almost impossible to kill. For a moment she started to wonder why she wasn't in command. But then she smiled as she realised she was experiencing jealousy for the first time in her new life. But...but it was true as a combat 'unit' she was far more capable than even a marine in power armour...perhaps she _should_ be in charge.

0=0=0=0

**Aboard the TASS Red Witch.**

“Great!” Dawn turned to her friend and second in command, Billie Smith, after Lt Moore had given them their briefing, “A proper fight with us totally doing the boarding actions!”

“Blood thirsty, much?” replied Billie as she walked towards their section bay.

“Hey,” Dawn shrugged, “all this waiting to get attacked was totally getting me down, y'know what I mean?”

“Totally,” Billie agreed with a nod.

“So,” Dawn took a deep breath, “I want you to deal with weapons, I'll like look after the suits. Kat can look after ammo and Rei can deal with other supplies.”

“That leaves, Chloe, Laura, Jazmin and Jenna,” Billie observed as they came to a halt in the companion way outside the section bay.

“Yeah,” Dawn replied thoughtfully, “split everyone up as you think best, but, let me have Laura I wanna keep an eye on her.”

“She still goin' on about 'slave worlds' run by mega corporations, is she?”

“Yep,” Dawn nodded, “last thing we need before going into combat is for someone to not be keeping their eye on the ball.”

“You'll get no argument from me Dawn,” Billie agreed.

“Okay,” Dawn said, “we better get on that ready line Marine!”

“Yeah,” Billie laughed quietly, “like we've only got four days before we _might_ get into combat!”

0=0=0=0


	13. Chapter 13

**Porto Bello.**

“Wakey-wakey sleepy head.”

“Huh?” Amy groaned as she cracked an eyelid or two and tried to work out where she was, “What?”

“Time to get up, Amy,” the voice belonged Stella; the young woman shook Amy into wakefulness.

“Okay, okay,” Amy moaned as she opened her eyes to see Stella looking down at her, “I'm awake...”

“Good,” Stella replied, “I need to ask you something.”

“Can't it wait?” Amy sat up and looked around; she appeared to be in a large hotel room, there was dust and pieces of plaster on the carpeted floor and the curtains moved from the breeze coming in through the broken windows.

“No it can't,” Stella replied her lips thinning as she spoke.

“Where's the bathroom?” Amy wanted to know as she swung her legs over the side of the bed, “And where's the girls?”

“Over there,” Stella pointed to a door on the far side of the room, “and the Jennys are in the other room and Zaria and Jayda are out getting supplies...”

“Great!” Amy got to her feet and wobbled a little as she stood up, after regaining her balance she headed for the bathroom.

“We need to talk,” Stella called as Amy made a bee-line for the bathroom.

“Later...” Amy replied as she arrived at the bathroom door.

“No, not later,” Stella replied firmly, “now!”

Amy slowed to a halt and turned to face Stella, “Can't it wait until after I've pee-ed an' totally washed up a little?”

“Maybe...” Stella admitted; Amy could see that her girlfriend wasn't happy and from what she could remember of the last twenty-four hours she could understand why.

“Okay,” Amy backed into the bathroom, “give me five minutes and you can ask as many questions as you like, okay?”

“Okay,” Stella replied reluctantly.

“Love you,” Amy called as she shut the door behind her.

Leaning against the door of the bathroom, Amy took a moment to try and order her thoughts before other more urgent factors spurred her into action. Unzipping the front of her Combat Environment Suit, Amy cursed the life saving clothing as she struggled to get it down around her knees. Once she'd got the overall-like suit off her upper body she hobbled over to the toilet, pulled down her panties and sat down with a relieved sigh. A couple of minutes later and now with an empty bladder, Amy rearranged her clothing so she could move about without tripping over.

Walking over to the wash basin she looked at herself in the mirror. Her hair was a mess and her face was covered in dirty smudges, a few bruises and some minor cuts. Filling the basin with water she looked around for some soap. What she really wanted to do was to strip off and have a shower, perhaps invite Stella in to share it, but she'd have to make do with washing her hands and face, it was better than nothing she told herself.

As she washed up, Amy tried to remember how she'd ended up in the Porto Bello Hilton, for that was where she was, it said so on the towels. She remembered how she'd magicked up the contract for Zaria and Jayda to sign, she also remembered the red hot needles lancing through her brain, a symptom of her using too much magic in too short a time mixed with too little sleep. After that little magic trick, Amy remembered hanging onto Stella and being led down a rubble strewn street. Vaguely she remembered being taken into the hotel and carried up the stairs, after that there was nothing.

Wiping her face dry with one of the hotel’s soft, fluffy towels, Amy couldn't help but think that life had become very hard recently, what with people trying to kill her and towns being blown up around her, she wanted to know where all the 'softness' had gone. Well, she smiled, some of the 'softness' was waiting on the other side of the door, but otherwise there didn't seem to be much that was 'nice' left in her life. Amy was the first to admit that she wasn't very brave, she didn't really like being a pirate, she'd much rather not go on 'adventures'; she'd much rather have a nice home, a steady job and someone to come home to in the evening.

Looking at her now clean face, Amy noted that she didn't look too bad. The bruises and cuts weren't as bad as they'd looked and she felt a much more human now she'd cleaned up a little. All she needed now was a hair salon and maybe something to eat and drink. Again, Amy gave herself a hopeful smile in the mirror, a beauty parlour was probably out of the question but there had to be something to eat and drink somewhere around. Opening the bathroom door, Amy stepped out into the biggest bedroom she'd ever seen, it was massive, full of expensive looking furniture and decorations and almost totally undamaged. As she'd noticed before there was dust everywhere, a few bits of plaster lying around and the windows were cracked or broken.

“Here,” Stella walked over to Amy and handed her a mug of steaming coffee, however she still didn't look very happy, “there's food over there,” she pointed to a low table which was covered in boxes of military field rations; Stella took a deep breath, which distracted Amy as she watched Stella's breasts rise and fall, “When were you going to tell me you were a pirate plotting to blow up the planet?”

“We're not going to blow up the planet,” Amy explained as she took hold of the mug and took a sip; she sighed with pleasure as the hot brew slipped down her throat and started to radiate warmth throughout her body, “We're only attacking Porto Bello.”

“But why?” Stella asked as she followed Amy over to a couch and sat down beside her, “I know the people here are all arseholes but that doesn't mean you can blow them up!”

“Element 451,” Amy replied as she took another, longer, sip of coffee, “and I was going to tell you about the pirate thing...honest.”

“When?”

“Soon...” even as she said the word, Amy knew it was a lie, signing heavily she put down her coffee and reached out to take Stella's hand in her own, Stella moved her hand out of Amy's reach. “Look, I never wanted to be a pirate I sorta fell into it, it seemed like the best option at the time, but now...”

“What?” Stella demanded grumpily.

“Now I've found you I don't want to do this pirating thing any more...I mean, its totally dangerous!”

“Dangerous!?” Stella exclaimed, “And what's all this about me being your property?”

“Yeah, that,” Amy took another deep breath, “only thing I could think of at the time. Like, as long as they think you belong to me no one will mess with you...”

“No sexual torture?” Stella said with more than a little relief, “Not that I've got anything against sexual torture as long as there's safe words...”

“Huh?” Amy was catching a glimpse of a side of Stella she'd never suspected.

“Never mind,” Stella moved to change the subject, “so what are you going to do and what will become of me?”

“Whatever happens, Stella,” this time Amy did managed to take hold of Stella's hand, “I'll always try to keep you safe. And once I've found out who's trying to kill me, I promise we'll leave this pirating life and start up fresh somewhere new.”

“But until then you're still going to be a pirate witch and I'm going to have to play the part of your slave, right?”

“Looks like, sweet heart, but it won't be for long...”

“I can do that,” Stella said with a slight smile, “after all I _am_ an actress.”

0=0=0=0

“What are we going to do?” Jenny Himesaki said to her sister pirates as they sat around the dining table in the large, opulently furnished outer room of the suite; the pirate Jenny's were having a crisis of conscience.

“We should give ourselves up to the planetary authorities,” Jenny Huber suggested, “its not like we've killed anyone.

“And we can say we were tricked into being pirates,” Jenny Rangan added.

“You want to die by being slowly strangled?” Jenny Boyle asked as she looked at each of her sister pirates one after the other. “We'll be lucky if they even stop to hang us when the relief force gets here, and I'm betting they're on their way right now, they'll shoot us on sight.”

“You think?” Jenny Himesaki said as tears started to form in her eyes, “I never wanted it to turn out like this I thought it was going to be a big adventure, something to tell our kids about...”

“Y'never gonna have any kids if the Andersworlders catch you,” Jenny Boyle pointed out, “there's nothing in our futures but unmarked graves.”

“What are we going to do?” Jenny Rangan sobbed into her hand.

“Yeah,” nodded Jenny Huber with a sniff, “I don't want to die...I wanna go home to my mum and mom.”

“That's not going to happen anytime soon,” Jenny Boyle said with a hard edge to her voice; it might have escaped everyone else's notice but Jenny Boyle's, but the group dynamic had changed and she was the leader now. “Look,” Boyle leaned forward and lowered her voice forcing her friends to actually listen to what she was saying, “I say we stick with Miz Madison...”

“Why?” Jenny Rangan asked trying to reassert her leadership of the group.

“Well,” Boyle began to count off points on her fingers, “first she's a witch and by the sounds of it a pretty powerful one...”

“But she fainted after doing that little trick with the contract,” Jenny Himesaki pointed out.

“True,” Boyle nodded, “but she was tired, I've read about magic and witches, things like that happen if a witch is tired or has used too much magic.”

“Oh...” the other three girls nodded their heads in understanding.

“Look, gals,” Boyle took another deep breath, “what choice do we have? We daren't go back to the Black Freighter, remember someone tried to kill us too...”

“It was probably that Gun Captain, Miz Etta,” Huber announced as she came to realise that Boyle was probably right.

“If we stick with Miz Madison,” Boyle could see that she had Huber and both Himesaki and Rangan were wavering, “we'll at least have a powerful witch on our side an' she did save our lives...” Boyle watched as the wheels turned in her friend's minds, after a moment she called for a vote, “All those in favour of sticking with Miz Madison say, 'AARR!'.”

“AAAARRRR!” agreed the Jennys after only a moment's hesitation.

0=0=0=0

Looking up at the Porto Bello Hilton, Dread Pirate Zaria noted the large hole in the top floors of the building, it looked like the hotel had been hit by a missile. However the hotel's fire suppression system had put out the blaze and the hotel was safe enough for now. Turning her gaze away from the building she could see the transports taking off to dock and unload their cargoes on the ships still in orbit. While she watched she started to calculate what her share would have been if she was not being paid a fixed rate for the job. The two sums were a long way apart and it didn't matter to her that everyone else aboard the Natividad was being paid a fix rate too.

The truth was that Zaria knew her pirating days were coming to an end, she didn't want to end up as one of those lonely, old women she'd seen around the taverns telling stories for a mug of beer or signing on a ship to do the most menial work aboard for a few doubloons or a very small share of any cargo. Having seen the number of captives taken, Zaria knew that her share from their sale would make her a very rich woman, perhaps if Jayda and herself put their money together they could open a nice little weapons shop somewhere, start a family and grew old and fat together. But no, the Captain had signed the Natividad up for a fixed fee.

“What do you think?” Zaria asked as she and Jayda made their way through a line of smashed up air-cars.

“About...?” Jayda replied.

“Miz Madison,” Zaria replied laconically.

“Well...” Jayda came to a halt and shifted her rifle to a more comfortable position on her shoulder, “...as I see it the Captain screwed the pooch when she signed that contract with Flanagan...”

“You think we'd be better off with the witch and her little girls?” Zaria asked as she turned to look into her lover's eyes.

“Look, as I see it we'll be important to the witch, those girls are virgins she'll need someone to cut a few throats I'm betting,” Jayda explained, “and then there's the money. I'm thinking we'll get richer faster with Miz Madison than we will by staying aboard the Natividad.”

“We could also end up deader faster too,” Zaria explained.

“Hey,” Jayda shrugged, “we're pirates it comes with the territory. Look if we'd wanted a safe life we'd both have stayed farmers.”

“True,” Zaria nodded.

“So we stick with Miz Madison?” Jayda wanted to know.

“AAAARRRR!” Zaria said with a grin.

0=0=0=0

**Aboard the TASS Reluctant.**

The women of the Reluctant's security section were lined up in the mess hall. It was a very short line, with only five women in it, but that was okay because there wasn't much room for any more. The sixth woman of the group made her way along the short line checking on the other women's combat equipment. Chief Lehane was officially in charge of the security section, but as her duties on the bridge as the Reluctant's gunnery officer, kept her from actually leading the security section into combat she'd had to delegate the leadership role to Petty Officer Second Class Buffy Summers. Coming to a halt in front of the last woman in the line, Buffy smiled and winked at Able Crew Woman Alitza Bhatnagar who was Buffy's friend and sometimes lover; Alitza didn't seem to care that Buffy was a robot and had stuck by her even when Buffy's systems had been on the fritz. Satisfied that everything was in order, Buffy told her people to stand easy.

“Okay, ladies,” Buffy relaxed and leaned her butt against a table, “that was good and tomorrow we'll have you fitted for your hard suits. But remember, if it does come to a boarding action, we're there to back up the Marines, no heroics, understand?”

“Yes Chief,” the five other women chorused.

“Okay,” Buffy relaxed a little more, “now that's straight you can all get back to your bunks or other duties...now get!” Buffy watched as 'her' girls made their way towards the door, “And don't forget to hand your weapons and ammo back into the armoury...and ACW Bhatnagar could you stay for a moment?”

Alitza broke away from the group and went to stand in front of Buffy.

“Hey,” Buffy smiled.

“Hey, y'self,” Alitza grinned back. 

“Like, I totally need a second in command,” Buffy put down her M-Tar rifle on a nearby table before stepping closer to Alitza, “you want the job?”

“Isn't that playing favourites?” Alitza stepped closer so her breasts were almost touching Buffy's.

“Totally, like duh...” Buffy sniggered, “...you want the job? There's perks!”

“Perks?” Alitza gazed into Buffy's eyes to see herself reflected there, “What sorta perks?”

“Like, come back to my cabin and I'll totally show you...”

0=0=0=0


	14. Chapter 14

**The Porto Bello Hilton.**

Walking into the main room of the suite with Stella hard on her heels, Amy saw the four Jennys sitting around the dinning table as if they'd been discussing something very important. On seeing Amy enter the room Boyle was the first to jump to her feet rapidly followed by the other three pirate girls.

“Can we do something for you Ma'am?” Boyle asked.

This was something new, Amy told herself as she came to a halt in front of the girls. The Jennys had never called her 'Ma'am' before and they'd certainly never jumped to attention when she'd entered the room either. Also it now appeared that Jenny Boyle was acting as spokes-pirate in Jenny Rangan's place, this was good because Amy had been thinking of promoting Jenny Boyle to 'Pirate' because she appeared to be the most pirate-like of the four girls.

“Yes...maybe...” Amy replied hesitantly as she suddenly realised she'd somehow become responsible for the lives of these young girls, “first, Jenny Boyle you're promoted to Pirate, from now on you're Pirate Boyle, congratulations...”

“Thank-you Ma'am!” Boyle smiled as she appeared to grow a couple of inches in height with pride.

“Now, tell me,” Amy looked from one girl to another, “who exactly assigned you the mission of planting the bomb in the castle?”

“Captain Flanagan, Ma'am,” Pirate Boyle announced, “but it was Chief Gun Captain Etta who told us exactly what to do and told us that we _must_ take you on the mission with us.”

“Oh Goddess!” Amy stumbled backwards and had to be held up for a moment by Stella, “Etta?” she looked at the four girls as the shock of betrayal hit her squarely in the heart, “You're sure?”

“Yes, Ma'am,” Boyle confirmed her statement with a firm nod of the head; Amy saw by the girl's aura that she believed she was telling the truth as were the other girls.

“Betrayed...” Amy's voice caught in her throat as she turned to face Stella, “...but why?”

As hard as she might try, Amy couldn't think of one action she'd made that would cause her lover and her Captain to betray her and send her to her death.

“Are you all right Ma'am?” Pirate Boyle asked with real concern.

“My Mistress has had a shock,” Stella spoke up when Amy didn't seem to be able to form words, “she has been betrayed by people she loved and trusted...” Stella's jaw became firmer as she spoke, “...we all love and trust Mistress Amy don't we?”

“AARR!” exclaimed the young pirates.

“We'd never betray her would we?”

“NEVER!” the pirate girls brandished their weapons.

“And we'll punish any who do, isn't that right?”

Once again the pirates gave a blood thirsty, “AAAAARRRRRR!” of agreement.

“Thank-you...” Amy said as she wiped the tears from her eyes, “...thank-you for your support,” once again Amy saw that the girl's auras showed that for now at least, they'd be loyal to her and only her; taking a deep breath Amy regained control of her emotions, “Of course they'll all totally going to have to die...and once again let be remind you that Flanagan and Etta were going to send you girls to your deaths just so they could kill me...”

“AAARRR!” the pirates agreed.

“We're behind you one-hundred-percent, Ma'am,” Jenny Himesaki explained.

“Betrayed by your lover Ma'am,” Jenny Rangan added, “death's too good for her.”

“Just tell us what you want done,” Jenny Huber spoke up, “and we'll do it!”

“May I suggest we have a plan, Ma'am?” Pirate Boyle pointed out, “It would be a bad idea to go off at half cock...” the girl frowned for a moment, “...and what's a 'half-cock' anyway?”

“Pirate Boyle is right Mistress,” Stella agreed, “letting our emotions dictate our actions would be foolish.”

“Totally,” Amy replied, all the while feeling better as her plans for revenge grew in detail, “like I don't even know where the Black Freighter is right at this moment...”

Right at that moment the door to the suite opened to admit Dread-Pirate Zaria and Not-So-Dread-Pirate Jayda.

“We might be able to help there,” Dread Pirate Zaria announced as she crossed the room towards the group, “and why wasn't there a guard outside the door, we coulda been anyone comin' in...”

“Aye-aye, Dread!” Pirate Boyle turned to Jenny Himesaki and jerked her head towards the door; the girl quickly grabbed her weapons and went off to stand guard in the corridor.

“Good,” Zaria nodded and smiled; perhaps there was hope for these girls after all she told herself.

“You were saying?” Amy turned her attention to the senior pirate.

“Well, Ma'am...”

Amy wondered at how everyone seemed to be calling her 'Ma'am' today.

“...I carnt tell ye where the Black Freighter be...but...” Zaria paused for dramatic effect, “...I know were her shuttles are.”

“You're a total star, Zaria!” Amy exclaimed as her moment of vengeance got a little closer, “Where?”

“They're loading loot down in the old warehouse district,” Zaria explained, “and they're loading it like there's no tomorrow. My guess be that they're getting ready to boost out of orbit.”

“No time to waste, Ma'am,” NSDP Jayda added her voice to that of her girlfriend.

“You're probably right,” Amy agreed.

“Mistress,” Stella stepped up close to Amy so she could whisper in her ear, “I love you and although you lied to me about being a pirate an'all, I don't want to see you killed because you rushed in were even a slayer might fear to tread.”

“Don't worry,” Amy smiled as she caressed Stella's cheek lightly with her hand, “I've totally no plans on rushing in and getting killed,” she turned back to face her other followers, “I've no intention of any of us being killed, after all what's the point of revenge if you're not alive to enjoy it?” Amy thought for a moment, “I had a lot of friends aboard the Black Freighter an' I'm guessing that they all haven't turned on me or Flanagan and Etta didn't let everyone in on their plot...”

“Are you going to suggest we just walk up to one of the shuttles an' ride it up to the Freighter?” Pirate Boyle asked.

“A bold plan,” Zaria nodded, “which could get us all killed.”

“Don't worry I can totally do the old Jedi mind trick thing if anyone stops us,” Amy pointed out.

“'Old Jedi mind trick'?” chorused the younger pirates in confusion.

“You know...” Amy tried to explain, “...these aren't the pirates you're looking for...”

“Huh?” everyone who wasn't Amy said.

“Whatever...” Amy sighed, “...trust me, I'm a witch, I can stop them from recognising me before we get aboard.”

“A suggestion, Mistress?” Stella had just remembered a plot twist from a 'Space Girl' episode that she thought might be useful.

“Yes?” Amy turned to look at Stella.

“Look, it occurs to me that no one on the Black Freighter knows us except for you and the Jennys,” Stella started to explain her idea, “couldn't you do one of those glamours you witches do all the time to cover up zits an' stuff? It'd be easier than trying to control people's minds.”

“Your slave has a point, Ma'am,” Zaria observed.

“We were only aboard the Freighter for a few days,” Pirate Boyle added, “I doubt anyone would remember us.”

“Okay...” Amy nodded her head slowly; everyone had a point, a glamour, even one covering several people was way easier than trying to control someone's mind even if it was only for a few minutes, “...I agree we'll go with the glamour, for now,” she looked directly at Zaria, “come to the window and show me where the Freighter's shuttles are taking off from...”

0=0=0=0

**The Old Warehouse District, Porto Bello.**

A few fires still smouldered around the transport as Amy and her party advanced on the shuttle. Before they'd left the Hilton, Amy had caste a glamour spell, now no one would recognise them, at least not at first, there was always a chance that over time someone would see through their disguises. Of course Stella had been harder to disguise, something better than a spell was needed in her case. Amy had decided to 'formalise' her relationship with the actress, basically she'd promoted her from 'slave' to 'wife'. This of course required finding her a more suitable outfit than the rather dirty and ripped white jump suit she was wearing now. After a search of the hotel's shops the pirates found Stella an outfit that consisted of a lot of black leather, bare skin and thigh high boots. Also she now wore a big pistol slung low in a holster on her hip, she was in fact the very image of a typical pirate's wife.

“So what are we going to do,” Zaria asked as the party came to a halt just short of the ramp leading up into the shuttle's cargo bay, “just march right on in?”

“You got a better idea?” Amy asked as she watched the loaders, which looked suspiciously like the loading machines from the film 'Aliens', being driven up and down the loading ramp, each with its own cargo of Element 451.

“Now that you ask,” Zaria gave a shrug and shook her head, “no...”

“Right then,” Amy started up the ramp with her followers coming up behind her, “just follow my lead.”

“Okay, you stop right there,” ordered the guard at the top of the ramp; she was a hard bitten, short, heavy set woman with an eye patch and a lot of weapons festooned about her person; Amy recognised her immediately, she was Dread Pirate Millie who commanded the ship's security detail. “Who are ya an' wots ya business?”

“Tara Rosenberg,” Amy replied thinking up a name on the spur of the moment, “I'm the Ship's Witch aboard the Natividad, I have an important message for your Captain from my Captain.”

“But the Natividad boosted outta orbit a couple of hours ago,” Millie explained.

“She did!?” Zaria exclaimed doing her best to look and sound surprised, “Why the scurvy, lilly livered dogs!”

“Left you behind, 'ave they?” Millie smirked.

“So it would seem,” Amy said as she turned and gave Zaria a warning glance.

“So wot's this message ya got?” Millie wanted to know.

“Doesn't seem important now...” Amy replied; Millie wasn't a 'bad' pirate, at least she never tortured any of their captives so Amy decided not to kill her, “...anyway I can't be bothered playing games any-more...” turning to Millie she looked deeply into her eyes as her own eyes went pitch black, “...tell me where Captain Flanagan is and...oh yes...these are _totally_ not the pirates you're looking for, okay?”

“Sure, okay,” Millie took a step away from Amy a look of real fear on her face, “there's no need to go all black eyed and veiny on me...”

“Captain Flanagan?” Amy demanded as her hair went coal black.

“Last I heard she was on the bridge,” Millie replied.

“Good,” Amy smiled as her eyes, skin and hair returned to normal, she turned to her pirates and grinned, “follow me girls...” she looked back at Millie, “...you saw nothing understand?”

“Yes Ma'am...” Millie straightened up to attention, “...I mean, no Ma'am...I mean...”

“Whatever...” Amy sighed as she led the way into the bowels of the shuttle.

“Erm...” Zaria trotted forward until she was walking next to Amy, “that was mega scary, I'm glad I'm on your side...anyway did she mean the bridge of the shuttle or the bridge of the Freighter, an' what's with our ship leaving me an' Jayda behind?”

“Looks like we've all been betrayed,” Amy led the way through the cargo bay and up onto the shuttle's bridge.

The shuttle was more like a small spaceship than a simple run-about that took people and small loads of cargo up and down from starships in orbit. This particular type of shuttle could carry two-thousand tons of cargo into orbit; which was good because element 451 was very heavy.

Ignored by the crew who were too busy securing all the ingots of element 451 the pirates had stolen, Amy led her boarding party up into the crew area of the ship and eventually onto the bridge level. Walking briskly along the passageway towards the control centre of the ship she brushed any pirates that got in her way to one side with a wave of her hand. Finding the hatch to the bridge open, she walked right in to see Captain Flanagan standing talking to the shuttle's pilot.

“What's going on here?” Flanagan demanded as she saw the boarding party deploy around the bridge and point their weapons at her and her crew; at first she thought that one of her sister Captains were trying to steal the shuttle and its cargo. “Who are you and what do you want?” Flanagan demanded as she fixed Amy with an angry look, “This better be good...”

“Don't recognise me do you...Captain?” Amy sneered as she took another step towards Flanagan and let her disguise start to fade, “Maybe now...?”

“What?” Flanagan stared at the witch for several moments before recognition dawned, “Madison!” she gasped, “But you're dead!”

“The reports of my death were highly exaggerated...MAW-HA-HA!” Amy laughed diabolically.

“I suppose you've come to kill me,” Flanagan's hand crept towards the holster containing her pistol.

“Well, duh, like, totally,” Amy shrugged.

“Don't you want to know why I wanted you dead?” Flanagan asked.

“Not really,” Amy shrugged, “well just not yet...” she made some mystical gestures with her hands before she started to recite her spell, “Goddess Hecate hear my plea, before me let the unseen thing crawl!”

There was a swirl of brightly coloured lights, followed by a flash and a small puff of smoke. When the smoke cleared the Captain's clothes lay in an untidy heap on the deck.

“Pirate Boyle,” Amy snapped, “clap the Captain Rat in irons, but don't hurt her I'll need her again when we get back to the Freighter,” Amy turned to look at the pilot, “You! What's your name?”

“Pilot Yuuki Kana,” the petite, blonde pirate girl replied her eyes wide with fear and astonishment.

“Don't worry Yuuki, I'm not going to hurt you if you obey my orders...”

“Yes Ma'am!”

“How soon can we boost into orbit?” Amy wanted to know.

“I was about to recall the crew and seal the ship...” Yuuki looked nervously from one pirate to another, “...about five or ten minutes.”

“Good,” Amy smiled, “then do so, once you're ready to lift ship tell me,” she next turned to Jayda, “Jayda, take two of the Jennys and guard the corridor, no one is to be allowed onto the bridge without my express permission.”

“Aye-aye, Ma'am,” collecting up two of the Jennys by eye Jayda led them out the hatch to secure the corridor.

“Pirate Boyle,” Amy continued to give orders, “you're in charge of the Captain Rat. Jenny Himesaki, you keep an eye on our friend the pilot here, Zaria, Stella,” Amy pointed to the other side of the compartment, once in a huddle there, Amy explained what she wanted done. “Right while we're lifting to rendezvous with the Freighter I want you two to explain to the crew who's side they're on, then when we get back to the Freighter I want you Zaria to arrest Gun Captain Etta.”

“You gonna challenge the Captain for command of the Freighter?” Zaria wanted to know.

“That's the plan,” Amy agreed, “but I won't kill them until after I've found out why she and Etta totally betrayed me an' nearly had me killed.”

“So you'll be turning her back into a person then?” Stella asked.

“Be a bit difficult questioning her otherwise,” Amy pointed out.

“Good,” Zaria nodded her agreement, “the code says that both parties in a challenge should have a fair chance an' 'er bein' a rat an' you a witch is 'ardly fair.”

“Oh don't worry,” Amy smirked, “it'll be a fair fight.”

“Pilot says we're ready to boost outta this place,” Himesaki called from the pilot's station.

“Good,” Amy smiled, “I love it when a plan totally comes together!”

0=0=0=0

**Pirate Ranks for Enlisted Personnel.  
Pirate Ranks.....…….…...…….….……...Military Equivalent.**  
E7 Mistress................................................Senior Warrant Officer.  
E6 Chief............................................................Warrant Officer.  
E5 Dread-Pirate.................................................Staff Sergeant.  
E4 Not-So-Dread-Pirate........................................Sergeant.  
E3 Pirate First Class.............................................Corporal.  
E2 Pirate..........................................................Lance Corporal.  
E1 Jenny................................................................Private.

 **Pirate Ranks for Commissioned Personnel.**  
O7 Commodore........................................................General.  
O6 Captain................................................................Colonel.  
O5 First Officer.......................................................Lt Colonel.  
O4 Second Officer (Department Head)......................Major.  
O3 Third Officer (Assistant Department Head)........Captain.  
O2 Ensign...............................................................Lieutenant.   
O1 Middie...........................................................2nd Lieutenant.


	15. Chapter 15

**The Black Freighter.**

“Are we nearly there yet?” Amy asked; it might just be a case of nerves but it did seem like it'd taken ages to get from the surface of Andersworld and up into orbit.

“Another five minutes, Ma'am,” Himesaki called from where she stood behind the pilot's chair.

If the truth was told, Amy was starting to think that trying to take over the Black Freighter after deposing Captain Flanagan wasn't such a good idea. The Freighter had a crew of over two hundred desperate cut throats who might not take kindly to her take over bid, plus Captain Flanagan was a successful and popular captain. Just as she was about to order the pilot to turn the shuttle around, the hatch to the bridge opened to admit Dread Pirate Zaria.

“Ma'am,” Zaria called as she strode across the deck towards Amy followed closely by Stella, “I've spoken to the crew...”

“And?” Amy asked with some trepidation.

“Well...” Zaria rubbed her chin with the thumb and forefinger of her right hand, “...they don't disbelieve you but they don't exactly believe you either...”

“Yeah,” Stella agreed, “they sorta said that as you're a witch you're able to look after yourself, which is sorta proved by you still being alive.”

“But,” Zaria took up the story again, “wot really pissed people off was the thought that this Captain Flanagan person would kill the Jennys just to further her plans.”

“So, what are we saying here?” Amy wanted to know.

“The crew won't try and stop you,” Zaria explained, “but they won't support you 'til after you've confronted Captain Flanagan and made your case.”

“And what about you?” Amy said in a low voice as she looked Zaria in the eye.

“Ma'am...” Zaria took a deep breath, “...me an' Jayda are with you all the way, after all,” she shrugged, “we've got nowhere else to go...”

‘With her all the way, huh?’ thought Amy, right up to the point that Flanagan ordered her to be tossed out of an airlock.

“Whatever...” Amy sighed, “...whatever happens promise me you'll look out for Stella.”

“Aye-aye, Ma'am,” Zaria replied with a nod.

“Docking in one minute,” Pilot Yuuki called from the other end of the bridge.

“Okay,” Amy drew herself up and unconsciously checked her weapons and magic, “lets get this show on the road...Pirate Boyle bring the Captain Rat, Himesaki you can stop menacing the pilot...lets get down to the airlock,” Amy shrugged as she resigned herself to whatever fate might bring her, “in ten minutes time I might be a pirate captain or fighting to breath vacuum.”

0=0=0=0

Ten minutes later, Amy wasn't trying to breath vacuum, in fact she and her personal pirates were standing in the main cargo hold of the Black Freighter as about half the crew gathered around them taking their seats on cargo containers or ingots of element 451. As usual during a raid the pirates all carried their personnel weapons; if there was a split vote things could get very messy very quickly. They were all there to judge Flanagan and Amy; depending on how the crew voted Amy or the captain would be dead very soon.

“Okay, lets have a little hush!” First Officer Rita Hayworth (a tall, dark-blonde pirate in her early thirties) called as the crew settled down to hear what Amy and the Captain had to say for themselves, “Before we start,” Hayworth turned to Amy, “I'll need you to restore the Captain to her former self.”

Shrugging as if to show indifference, Amy gestured at the 'Captain Rat'; there was a flash of light and a puff of multi-coloured smoke and a cry of 'Oooooh!' from the crew. A moment later Captain Flanagan was standing in the nude before the crew.

“CLAP HER IN IRONS!” Flanagan yelled as she pointed accusingly at Amy.

“Sorry Captain,” Hayworth stepped forward, “but Miz Madison has challenged you for command of the Freighter. No one will be clapped in irons until after the challenge has been adjudicated...and someone bring the Captain some clothes,” turning away from Flanagan, Hayworth looked once more at Amy, “While the Captain gets dressed, why don't you tell everyone why you're challenging the Captain for command...”

0=0=0=0

It took Amy just over five minutes to tell her tale of betrayal and attempted murder and how Flanagan had sent the four innocent Jennys to almost certain death. Amy really took her time putting this point over, stressing the innocence of the four young pirates even more than Flanagan's attempt at having herself killed in revenge for some unfathomable and unknowable crime that Amy was supposed to have committed.

“...sisters,” Amy concluded, “ever since I was taken in by the crew of the Black Freighter I have totally done my best to serve you and the ship and what has been my reward?” Amy turned to look at Flanagan, “She...” Amy pointed an accusing finger at the Captain, “...tried to kill me!”

“Well of course I did!” sneered Flanagan, “death is the only punishment fitting for someone who betrayed their shipmates and her Captain...”

“Betrayed!?” Amy squeaked in shock as she struggled not to turn the Captain into a grease spot on the deck, if she did that even she wouldn't be able to save herself from the hail of bullets the crew would send in her direction. “It's, like not me who's the betrayer around here...!”

“Miz Madison,” Hayworth stepped forward to bring order back to the proceedings, “you've had your chance to speak its the Captain's turn now, you'll be able to make a statement before the vote is caste.”

“Of course I tried to kill the treacherous bitch,” Captain Flanagan smiled as she started to pace the deck, “who do you think betrayed us to the Alliance when we tried to grab the Indomitable, eh? Who was it that wiped the mind of that Terran Admiral and did such a bad job of it as to leave the Terran whore a mindless moron? Was this just an accident or was the spy Madison just trying to cover her tracks?”

The crew began to mutter loudly as they discussed the Captain's accusations amongst themselves.

“I know Sisters,” Flanagan continued in a strong voice, “I didn't believe it myself, not at first...but then Chief Gun Captain Etta came to me and told me that she'd seen and heard the woman she'd loved talking to demons...” there were gasps of horror from the crew; although they did business with demons, even pirates didn't fully trust their demonic allies. “She told me how she'd over heard the Witch Madison pledging the lives, body and soul, of each and everyone of you,” as she spoke Flanagan ran her eyes over the assembled pirates, “so that she might rise to be Queen of Pirates! REMEMBER!” spit flew from Flanagan's lips as she stared wild eyed at Amy, “THOU SHALL NOT SUFFER A WITCH TO LIVE!”

“Captain!” First Officer Hayworth called over the angry muttering of the crew, “if that be so, why did you feel it necessary to kill four young women who'd only just joined the ship's company and had done no one any harm? Why didn't you bring Miz Madison's treason to the notice of your officers?”

“I couldn't risk her twisting your minds, with her mind controlling spells, just like she's doing right now,” Flanagan explained.

“Is that so?” Hayworth asked.

“Of course,” replied the Captain her head held high, “this is exactly what the Witch wanted to happen so she could take control of the ship and stop my plans...”

“Your plans?” Hayworth asked as the crew once again stopped muttering and listened closely to what was being said, “What plans be these?”

“Sisters,” Flanagan said in a calm motherly tone of voice having regained control of herself, “the days of the old pirates is passing. Even with the Shedu menace the Alliance and their allies get stronger every year. Has anyone thought what will happen when the Alliance beats the Shedu and they will, you mark my words. Just what do you think those Terran bitches will do with all those ships and troops, do you think they'll meekly go home and take up having babies?” Flanagan paused for just a moment as the crew sniggered, “NO!” she yelled, “No, they'll come after us and in less than a year we'll all be dead or labouring on some hell planet under the lash of some demon as the Terrans count the D’lahs they got from selling us into slavery...”

“And what did you intend to do?” First Officer Hayworth wanted to know.

“I was going to take the money from the sale of the four-five-one and use it to build a pirate state,” Flanagan explained as her eyes took on a faraway look, “Somewhere we'd be able to build homes and proper warships so that when the Alliance came for us we'd be able to defend ourselves...”

“You say you were going to use the money from the four-five-one to finance this?” Hayworth asked slowly.

“Of course,” Flanagan nodded, “that's why I was paying the consorts a fixed rate instead of shares.”

“And when did you intend to ask the crew what they wanted to do with their shares,” Hayworth looked around as the crew started to hum like a swarm of killer bees, “None of us here agreed to work for wages, we all signed on for shares...many women here were going to use their shares to leave the pirating life and set up home and start families, but you...” Hayworth turned to look accusingly at Captain Flanagan, “...thought you knew better and without a vote decided to STEAL these good honest women's money before it had even been put into their accounts!”

The cargo hold descended into chaos as the pirates started to shout and demand that Captain Flanagan should be tossed out of the airlock right this minute. As she stood and watched, Amy couldn't really believe her eyes and ears. In the space of a few seconds she'd gone from being sure that she was going to die, to looking forward to taking command of The Freighter, she felt someone tap her on the shoulder, turning she found Zaria grinning at her.

“Let that be a lesson to ye, Ma'am,” the Dread Pirate said just loud enough for Amy to hear, “never get between a pirate and her share of the loot.”

“Oh don't worry,” Amy replied, “like, the idea had never entered my mind!”

“SISTERS!” Hayworth called as she attempted to bring order to the proceedings, “Sisters...I think we need to bring charges of attempted fruad and theft against the captain, all those in favour...?”

“AAAAAAAARRRRRRRR!” cried the crew like a pack of rabid wolves out for blood.

0=0=0=0

From the moment the question of shares had been brought up, Captain Flanagan's fate was sealed. It wasn't that the crew thought her idea of a pirate planet was a bad one. In fact a lot of the crew thought it was a good idea, _but_ she'd not asked them. The Captain had made the mistake of doing what she thought was right irrespective of what the crew might think. If she'd attempted to persuade the crew instead of trying to steal their shares the chances were she'd have got her way. Most women who ended up as pirates did it for purely financial reasons or to escape some terrible situation at home, but deep down most wanted the security of a home free of fear and interference from the 'bosses'. The goal of most pirates was to make enough money to stop pirating and start a new life with the money they'd stolen. Even women like Jayda and Zaria, two hard bitten cut throats who'd kill you and steal the clothes off your back as soon as look at you, even they dreamed of the day they could stop being pirates and open their own little weapons shop somewhere.

If only Captain Flanagan had asked her crew instead of just taking the money for her own plans, this wasn't the Alliance where a commander did what she wanted and the crew just had to obey. If nothing else the pirating community was a democracy in the truest meaning of the word. But Captain Flanagan had forgotten that and now she had to pay. It took the crew about ten minutes to decide on Flanagan's guilt and she was sentenced to death by vacuum. Chief Gun Captain Etta was sentenced to being exiled from the crew and cast adrift for aiding and abetting the Captain's attempt to kill Amy and the Jennys. She'd be put into a lifeboat with supplies and air for thirty days and then set adrift in the first solar system with inhabited planets that they came to; she'd have a fare chance of being picked up. What would happen to her after that depended on how good a story she'd thought up to tell her rescuers.

0=0=0=0

“So,” Stella said as she and Amy lay in bed together several days after Flanagan's execution, “what does it feel like to be a Pirate Captain?”

“I don't know really,” Amy replied, “What does it feel like to be the wife of a pirate captain?”

“I'm your wife?” Stella replied slightly surprised; she'd honestly thought that the entire 'wife' thing had just been a roués de guerre to explain her presence. 

“If you wanna be,” Amy rolled over so she could look at Stella, “I mean I'd totally like it if you say you will, we can have a proper ceremony and everything,” she explained hopefully, “an' I promise I'll never turn you into a rat, or anything else.”

“Well...” Stella thought about Amy's offer.

It was the best offer she was likely to get, it looked like her career as an actress was over, Stella Stardust _did not_ read for parts in cheesy movies. Okay she still had all the cash she'd earnt over the years, she could contact her lawyers to make sure the government didn't get their greedy little hands on it, and... Well, the truth was she rather liked the idea of being the wife of a pirate captain who was also a witch.

“Erm, Stella,” Amy said hesitantly as she broke into her partner's thoughts, “when a girl, who is also a powerful witch and pirate captain proposes to another girl she expects an answer sometime soon...unless...”

“No!” Stella grinned at the hopeful look on Amy's face, “I'll be your wife, I'll even have babies for you, but not too many okay?”

“Okay,” Amy replied relieved and just a little surprised that a girl like Stella would marry her, “that's so cool I...”

“Shut up an' kiss me,” Stella told her betrothed.

“I hope you're not going to be a bossy wife,” Amy giggled as she moved in on Stella's lips.

“Only if you want me to be,” Stella replied, “only if you want...”

0=0=0=0


	16. Chapter 16

**Aboard the TASS Reluctant in company with the TASS Red Witch.**

“Strange ship bearing, red zero-four-five-mark-zero-one-zero, at extreme sensor range,” Faith called across the bridge to the Reluctant's captain.

“Course and speed, Miz Lehane?” Captain Adams replied only a moment later.

Reading off the 'strange ship's' heading and speed, Faith felt herself becoming one with the ship as her hands played over the controls of her battle board.

“Miz Rosenberg?” Captain Adams turned her attention to Willow as she fine tuned her own science station sensors.

“Chief Lehane's right,” Willow confirmed, “definite merchant-ship, she's probably decelerating before engaging her FTL drives.”

“Pirate?” Captain Adams asked.

“Its a good possibility,” Faith replied with a nod.

“Comms,” Captain Adams started to issue orders, “tell the Red Witch that we have a possible pirate at extreme sensor range and we're turning to investigate. The Red Witch is to conform to the Reluctant's actions as previously agreed. Helm, place us so that the Red Witch is between us and that ship, when they see us I want them to think that there's nothing out here but one, nice, fat, defenceless merchant-ship...Miz Lehane, bring our weapons on line but don't target that ship just yet.”

“Aye-aye, Captain,” Faith replied as she glanced over at Willow.

“Erm, Captain,” Willow said as she bent over her science station and tried to get more information on the target ship out of her sensors, “there's something hinky about that ship's drives.”

“Hinky, Miz Rosenberg?” Captain Adams tried to hide the smile that played across her lips, “That's hardly official Star Force reporting terminology, in what way are her drives 'hinky' precisely?”

“Captain,” Willow began as she straightened up and turned to face the captain, “although at first glance her drives appear to be totally ordinary civilian drives, there's something unusual about the power readings I'm picking up...”

“Target has changed course and increased speed,” Faith announced, “she's heading towards us at nearly six 'Gs' and increasing.”

“There I told you,” Willow announced, “hinky. No civilian drives on a merchant-ship should be able to do more than three 'Gs', four at best.”

“Helm,” Captain Adams looked down to where Ensign Mountshaft sat at the ship's controls, “put us in the sensor shadow of the Red Witch, I don't want them to know we're here until its too late for them to run. Comms, tell the Red Witch what's going on just in case they've not been paying attention and remind them that I'll do all the talking...Jerri?”

“Captain?” First Officer Jerri Farr replied from the auxiliary control room near engineering which was her battle station; she'd take over command of the ship if the Captain and bridge crew was put out of action.

“Do you copy all this?”

“Aye-aye, Captain.”

“Good, lets hope you won't be needed,” Captain Adams turned to look at Faith again, “Miz Lehane, launch a remote sensor pod so we can see what's going on, but keep it as close to the Red Witch's hull as you can, I don't want that pirate to suspect there's a warship anywhere near.”

“Aye-aye, Captain,” Faith pressed several buttons on her board before saying, “sensor pod away...target now entering effective missile range.”

“Target is hailing us, Captain,” Petty Officer Youngerford the comms officer announced, “they want to know who we are and where we're heading.”

“Tell them we're the 'London' heading for Liverpool with a cargo of military equipment,” Captain Adams smiled, “that'll get their interest.”

“Captain!” CPO Grey at the ECM board called out, “They're jamming our long range comms, do you want me to burn through it?”

“Do you think you can?” Adams wanted to know.

“Its pretty heavy stuff, Captain,” Grey explained, “it'll take some time.”

“Then don't bother,” Adams ordered, “concentrate on getting our own jammers on line, I don't want this pirate calling for help and giving the game away.”

“Captain!” this time it was Faith's voice that called out.

“What now, Miz Lehane?”

“The pirate's just jammed our targeting systems and launched decoys,” Faith explained.

“Can we still shoot?” the captain wanted to know.

“Point defence is still functioning, but our missile launchers can't get a lock, neither can our secondaries.”

“Am I going to have to ram them?” Adams wanted to know.

“If ya can get me up close and personal,” Faith grinned, “I can target her manually with the 'thirties'.”

“I think I can promise to get you as close as you like, Miz Lehane,” Adams turned back to her comms officer, “Comms, tell Red Witch's Marines to be ready to board when I give the word and you better make sure our own Marines and security detail are awake, I expect we'll need them before the day's out.”

“Target is entering effective range of our thirties, Captain,” Faith announce a moment later.

“They're hailing us again,” Youngerford called, “they're telling us to heave to and prepare to be boarded.”

“Oh they are, are they?” Captain Adams shifted slightly in her chair.

“Yes Ma'am,” Youngerford replied.

“That was a rhetorical question, Miz Youngerford,” Captain Adams explained, “Miz Lehane, ready with your guns?”

“Aye-aye, Ma'am.”

“I'm going to try and pass her stern so you can rake her stern to bow, understood?”

“Understood,” Faith confirmed.

“Make every shot count and fire as your guns bear,” Adams told her, “Okay, Helm lets make our entrance...attack pattern Quebec...now!”

0=0=0=0

Even as the Reluctant appeared from behind the bulk of the Red Witch and the massive Q-ship opened her gun ports to reveal her own hidden armament, the pirate captain had realised she'd flown into a trap and was trying to sheer off and save her ship. Appearing over the curve of the Red Witch's hull like some deadly metallic moon the Reluctant headed straight for the pirate's vulnerable stern and her defenceless sub-light drives. 

Aboard the Reluctant's bridge, Faith sat at her battle station her eyes fixed on the monitor and the cross-hairs that showed the great mass of the pirate sliding by as the warship closed on her target. Without being able to use the ships targeting systems due to the pirate's ultra effective ECM, Faith had slaved all four of her thirty millimetre Gatling guns together to act as one weapon controlled by the video-game-like joystick she held in her hand. Concentrating hard on the picture the ship's external cameras were feeding her, she felt herself become 'one' with the ship. In her mind she and the Reluctant had become one entity, one weapon, who's sole purpose was to rain death and destruction on the pirate ship before her. Inexorably the Reluctant moved like a disc shaped shark towards the pirate's stern, on the bridge Faith saw the pirate's drives start to enter her sight picture. 

“Anytime now would be good, Miz Lehane,” Captain Adams' voice held just a little apprehension as she began to realise just how big the pirate vessel was compared to her own craft.

Ignoring the captain's words, Faith concentrated on her monitor until the pirate's drives filled her screen, only then did she press down on the firing stud atop the joy-stick. The Reluctant's four thirty millimetre Gatlings burst into silent life as the weapon's rounds started to rip into the pirate's defenceless stern. Each Gatling gun was capable of firing over four-thousand rounds per minute which meant that in excess of sixteen-thousand rounds would hit the pirate in the same amount of time. That was if Faith kept her thumb held down on the firing stud. But, she didn't, there were only so many rounds in the gun's magazines and the ship's replicators could only replace rounds at a certain rate. If she kept firing at the maximum rate her guns were capable of the magazines would soon be empty and the Reluctant would have to break off her attack to wait for her magazines to be replenished.

However, Faith didn't need to fire for more than fifteen seconds to produce the result that Captain Adams had been hoping for. Four to five-thousand semi-armour piercing rounds were more than sufficient to destroy the pirate's reaction drives and reduce her to a drifting hulk. The thirty-millimetre rounds had ripped through the pirate's hull turning her drives to junk before smashing into the engineering spaces exposing it to vacuum and probably taking out most of her engine room staff. Although large the pirate ship wasn't designed for combat, yes she could carry a large crew for boarding actions, her ECM suite was probably more extensive and effective than the Reluctant's and she could no doubt carry a formidable armament. But none of these things could help her now, the Reluctant had attacked from the one direction the pirate couldn't bring any of her weapons to bear. Also even though the merchant-ship had been 'hardened' to face the rigours of combat, at the range from which the Alliance ship had attacked she was as vulnerable as any merchant-ship when attacked by a purpose built warship.

“Good shooting, Miz Lehane!” Captain Adams congratulated Faith as estimates of the damage to the pirate scrolled by in front of her eyes, “Helm, attack pattern Rebecca, if you please.”

“Aye-aye, attack pattern Rebecca, Captain,” Ensign Mountshaft called back to her commander as she entered commands into her helm controls.

Twisting away from the pirate's devastated drives the Reluctant slipped 'under' the pirate. Turning the ship onto her side so Faith could bring all four of the Reluctant's secondary weapons to bear, Mountshaft flew along the length of the enemy ship so Faith could fire hundreds of rounds into the pirate's undefended belly. Although the Reluctant's attack must have done terrible damage to her target the Reluctant didn't have things all her own way. The Star Force ship was now attacking from a direction that the pirate's gun captain's weapons could return fire, fortunately none of the pirate's heavier weapons could be brought to bear as the Reluctant was too close, however this didn't stop the pirate's point defence weapons from firing.

Kinetic penetrators rattled against the Reluctant's hull like some deadly metal hail. Some of the seven-millimetre rounds even penetrated her hull and she started to trail atmosphere as external sensors were destroyed, but no vital systems were hit and only two of the crew were wounded as rounds flashed through the ship's bulkheads to hit crewers as they sat at their stations. Even so, hit for hit, the Reluctant was winning this engagement...for now. If, however, she was to fly into a position too far away from the pirate the space buccaneer would be able to bring her heavier weapons into play and reduce the Reluctant to space junk. Flying the Reluctant as close to the pirate's hull as she dared, Ensign Mountshaft brought the ship to a halt relative to the pirate on the opposite side of the ship from the Red Witch.

“That's one in the beezer and one in the belly, an' nothin; back from 'er,” Willow announced as she studied her sensor readouts, “now we've a chance in a pounding match!”

“Ya-what!?” Faith came out of the trace she was in as she broke her connection with the ship and turned to look at the woman sitting next to her.

“Sorry,” Willow shrugged, “I got caught up in the moment and it seemed like the thing to say.”

“Whatever,” Faith sighed before turning her attention back to her weapons systems.

“Ship is now stationary relative to the target vessel, Captain,” Ensign Mountshaft called from the helm.

“Well done, Dolly,” Captain Adams replied before pressing a button on the comms unit fitted to the arm of her chair, “Boarders away!”

0=0=0=0

Down in the Reluctant's main airlock, Buffy stood at the head of her security section who were standing behind the ship's four woman marine detachment. The air lock had already had the air pumped from it so that when the doors slid open they wouldn't all be sucked out into space. Having felt the Reluctant's movement through the deck, Buffy now guessed that they'd come to a halt and any minute now her part in the fight would start. She felt no fear, yes she'd felt some concern when she'd sensed the pirate's bullets hitting the ship but she wasn't really frightened. A part of her positronic brain examined her thoughts on the subject and did a self diagnostic. Was she feeling no fear because she was a machine or was she just supremely confident in her abilities and her mission?

After only a millisecond's thought Buffy smiled, no it wasn't because she was a machine; she felt no fear because there wasn't really anything to be fearful about. She was Buffy-bot, more powerful than any slayer that had ever lived (even her name sake) plus she was wearing a hard suit and she carried enough weapons and ammunition to kill the crew of the pirate ship without help from the marines or her crew-mates. Once she and the rest of the boarding party was aboard the pirate ship the pirates really didn't stand a chance, they were as good as dead. 

The mission that had been assigned to the Reluctant's Marines and security section was one of coursing a diversion and drawing the pirates away from where the Red Witch's Marine detachment were going to board. Once the diversion part of their mission was completed they were to work through the enemy ship taking out any vital systems they could but their primary task was to secure any hostages the pirates might be holding. Although Alliance doctrine stated that prisoners and hostages were assumed to be 'dead' the moment they were captured, there was always the hope that they might be 'reincarnated' by a well led rescue party.

Looking between the armoured figures of the Marines, Buffy saw the air lock doors slide open to reveal the wall-like hull of the pirate only fifty yards away. Even as the Marines started to move forward one of their number was hit by a burst of fire from one of the pirate's point defence guns. The Marine took about a hundred and fifty rounds to her chest and head, at least twenty penetrated her power armour suit and she basically exploded as the rounds blew her body and suit apart. The sounds of screams came to Buffy's ears over her comms as several women cried out in shock, but not Buffy, she stepped forward through the red mist and whirling pieces of armour and body parts to grab the Marine's grappling gun as it spun through the vacuum of the air lock.

Lifting the weapon to her shoulder, Buffy fired just as one of the Reluctant's own weapons took out the point defence gun that had killed the Marine. The grapple trailed its life line behind it as it sped towards the side of the pirate. Hitting the enemy hull the grapple penetrated the hull before deploying long metal arms which held it against the inside wall of the hull. Tugging on the life line Buffy ensured that it was secure before tying it off on one of the heavy duty clamps positioned around the mouth of the air lock. Glancing to her left she saw that another Marine had secured her line to another clamp, now there were two lines connecting the Reluctant to the pirate. Clipping herself to the life line, Buffy prepared to throw herself into space, Turning her body so she could see the rest of her section she noted how they gripped their weapons and equipment like they'd never let them go, Buffy sensed that now would be a good time to say something to ease the tension and get everyone's minds off their fear.

“Follow me you apes,” she called out over her comms, “do y'wanna live forever!?”

0=0=0=0


	17. Chapter 17

**Aboard the Natividad.**

**Dawn.**

Standing at the junction of the two corridors, Dawn opened the face plate of her suit and took a deep breath of recently recycled air. The battle was over and damage control teams from the Red Witch and the Reluctant had restored gravity, heat, light and plugged the worst of the leaks so she could now breath outside her suit. Stepping to one side she watched as a Marine from first section herded half a dozen pirates down the passageway towards the Red Witch which was now docked with the pirate. They'd be placed in the brig until such time as they were put on trial for their crimes and spaced.

Turning away from the main corridor, Dawn looked down to where the three bodies of her comrades lay. It had been a hard fight, the pirates had fought like demons as the bodies of her three comrades would attest. Kat and Chloe had made the mistake of going down a passage where the pirates had set up an auto-cannon at the other end. Both women had been hit, the auto-cannon shells had pierced their armour like it wasn't there, they'd died instantly. Marine First Class Rei Alvarez had died when a pirate LAG bullet had smashed in her face plate and turned her head to mush. While she knew that the deaths of her three team mates was just a case of bad luck, it didn't stop her from feeling that if she'd been there her friends wouldn't be dead, but she couldn't be everywhere so...

Resting her armoured back against the corridor's bulkhead, Dawn slowly slide down the wall until she was sitting next to the body of her friend Kat Griffith. Why had Kat had to be one of the ones that died? Not only was Kat her assistant team leader, she had been her friend and confidant, if they'd not been in the Marines together they probably have been girlfriends, who knew they might have got married; Kat's death would leave a big hole in Dawn's life for a very long time. Hearing footsteps, Dawn looked up to see Marine Laura Cross standing at the junction looking down at her. While Dawn knew she shouldn't be having these thoughts, she still asked herself why Kat, Chloe and Rei had died while Cross had come through the battle with hardly a scratch on her suit? Cross, possibly the worst Marine in the Corps had survived, when three much better Marines and human beings had died. Life, Dawn decided, was totally unfair, if there was any justice in the universe it would be Cross lying on the deck with her suit opened up like a sardine tin.

“Erm, Corporal...?” Cross called hesitantly.

“What?” Dawn looked up at Cross and silently cursed her for still being alive when her best friend was dead.

“L-t wants us to help with the prisoner's kids,” Cross gestured down the corridor.

“What about...?” Dawn found she couldn't bring herself to say, 'the bodies', instead she turned her head to where her friends lay.

“L-t says that Sergeant Oonishi'll be along to collect them, later.”

“Whatever...” Dawn sighed heavily as she pushed herself back to her feet; Oonishi was a good platoon sergeant, she'd see to it that her dead Marines were treated right and Dawn would get her chance to say 'goodbye' before her buddies went on their last mission, “Okay, Cross where are these kids?”

0=0=0=0

**Buffy.**

Most pirates brought their older children along on voyages, Buffy didn't know why they did this, it struck her a foolish thing to do; to needlessly expose your children to danger or even risk death. But the pirates had always done it, perhaps they didn't trust the other pirates at their home ports to look out for the kids. What ever the reason Buffy had never asked and no one had ever told her. At least the pirates had put their children in an armoured shelter right at the centre of the ship. It had its own independent air supply which explained why the Reluctant's security section wasn't laying out bodies instead of herding children towards the air lock and the Red Witch's secure accommodation. The Alliance treated the children of pirates, at least all those under the age of sixteen, as victims rather than criminals, they'd be sent to re-education camps before being sent to live with good families and turned into useful members of society.

Watching as the children were led, one my one out of the shelter, Buffy turned as the sound of armoured footsteps ringing hollowly on the deck. Two Marines from the Red Witch had come into the chamber that held the shelter, they'd obvious come to help escort the children back to the Red Witch. One of the Marines was a corporal who had her face plate open, as Buffy's eyes swept over the corporal's face her facial recognition program and personnel history files sprang to life. It only took a microsecond for Buffy to realise she had seen the Corporal some where before, it took her a little longer to work out where and when; the time lag from seeing the corporal and working out who she was would have been unnoticeable to a human, but to a machine like Buffy it seemed to take forever.

“DAWN!?” Buffy cried as her emotion subroutines kicked in.

Slinging her rifle over her shoulder, Buffy rushed over to the stunned Marine and embraced her hard enough to produce an audible 'clang' as their armoured suits came together.

“Dawn is it really you?” Buffy gasped as her emotion subroutines went into over drive.

“Buffy?” Dawn was almost knocked off her feet as the Star Force Petty Officer grabbed hold of her with the strength of someone wearing a powered suit, it was this more than anything else that went a long way for Dawn to realise that this manic person was really her long lost sister.

The two women held each other at arms length so they could get a better look at each other.

“I thought you were dead!” they both said at the same time.

“You look older,” Buffy told her sister.

“You've changed,” Dawn replied with a frown, there was something different about her sister's nose.

“You wouldn't believe by how much,” Buffy smiled, she had a sister again, how she was going to explain that she was really a robot and not actually Dawn's flesh and blood sister could wait until later.

0=0=0=0

**Aboard the TASS Reluctant.**

Climbing up onto a chair, Captain Adams looked out at her crew who were crammed into the Reluctant's mess hall. It was now two weeks since the fight with the pirate ship that they'd only later discovered was named the Natividad. Since then they'd had several running battles with other pirates, but the pirates had been more interested in running than fighting. It showed that they had more tactical sense than the Shedu. Together the Reluctant, Thunderchild and Red Witch were a formidable force, more than a match for even a small group of pirate vessels.

The butcher's bill hadn't been too high either. They'd lost Marine Lance Corporal Yuuki Himesaki dead, while half a dozen crewers had been injured, none seriously. The Reluctant had a few more holes in her than her designers had intended, but they were all small enough to be sealed with foam and the crew had managed to jury-rig any damaged systems so that the Reluctant was operating at about eighty-seven-percent efficiency.

“Okay, ladies,” Adams called getting everyone's attention, “I have a few announcements to make...first I'd like to take this opportunity to welcome aboard Corporal Summers and her section,” Adams sort out Dawn in the crowd, she was standing over to one side with her Marines and the three surviving Marines from the Reluctant's own detachment. “I hope your stay with us will be successful and that your quarters aren't too crampt!”

This last was met with some laughter as they'd had to fit eight Marines in where there'd only been four previously. Also there was that thing about Petty Officer Summers being Corporal Summers' long lost sister, Captain Adams was glad she wasn't the one to have to explain about how the ship's cook was really a robot.

“We'll survive, Captain,” Dawn called back, “you know what they say about Marines...we improvise, adapt and overcome.”

“Well said Corporal, welcome aboard. Now,” Adams shifted her gaze back to the rest of her crew, “you'll no doubt be glad to know that we're being taken off pirate suppression duties and we're being sent back to the war...”

There was a quiet cheer at this news, no one liked pirate suppression duties and everyone wanted to fight the Shedu.

“...but first we're going back to Terra for a couple of weeks leave, then when we head out to fight the Shedu we'll be going in the new Reluctant.” Captain Adams explained, “Our old ship's a bit long in the tooth and Star Force is going to totally refit her and she'll be transferred to one of our allies. When we set out from Earth it'll be on the new, bigger and better armoured cruiser, TASS Reluctant 'A'. We'll have a bigger better ship and more importantly there'll be promotions for every one who signs on, which I hope will be all of you. I know we'll all be sad to see the old Reluctant go, but I'm sure we'll make the new Reluctant an even better ship...”

Captain Adams made a few more announcements before stepping down from the chair she'd been standing on. On the new Reluctant there was supposed to be a gym big enough to assembly the entire crew, which would be about six times the size of the present crew. They'd also be carrying an entire platoon of Marines. If Corporal Summers worked out, it might be an idea to have her bumped up to platoon sergeant. That would be her recommendation, but it was really down to the Marine Corps what they did with their Marines.

The thought of Corporal Summers brought the problem of Petty Officer Summers back to Captain Adams' mind; she really needed to talk to Science Officer Rosenberg. Glancing around she caught sight of the red haired officer and made her way over to her through the thinning crowd.

“Miz Rosenberg,” Adams called as she came to stand next to Willow.

“Captain?”

“About Petty Officer Summers' sister...”

0=0=0=0

_Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate's life for me.  
We pillage plunder, we rifle and loot.  
Drink up me hearties, yo ho.  
kidnap and ravage and don't give a hoot.  
Drink up me hearties, yo ho._

'A Pirate's Life for Me', highlight and right click.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3A19q7rysLs

**The 'Great Cabin' aboard the Black Freighter.**

Sitting cross legged and naked on the end of the big bed she shared with Stella, Amy studied the pad she held in her hands. Behind her Stella crawled on hands and knees across the bed. Coming to a halt she wrapped her arms around Amy's waist, pressed her breasts into her wife's back and rested her chin on her shoulder.

“Wot-cha-readin'?” Stella wanted to know.

“I found some of Captain Flanagan's papers,” Amy gestured to the pad in her hand, “I've been reading up on her plans for a pirate nation...”

“And?” Stella shifted her hands so they were cupping Amy's breasts.

“Stop that,” Amy shivered as Stella started to play with her nipples, “look it seems she totally had everything worked out even down to the planet she was going to set up on...”

“Let me see...” distracted for a moment, Stella stopped playing with Amy's breasts and gave the pad her attention, “...nice Earth-like planet,” she observed, “native human population, no demons or Shedu, way off the beaten track...”

“Yeah, it's as near perfect as you can get,” Amy added, “if only Flanagan had talked everyone into going along with her idea it could have worked.”

“Instead of just doing it and getting spaced for her trouble,” Stella pointed out.

“Totally not a mistake I'm going to make,” Amy pointed out, “Like Zaria said, don't get between a pirate and her share of the loot.”

“So you're goin' through with it?” Stella wanted to know as she went back to caressing Amy's breasts.

“Hey,” Amy shrugged, “which would you rather do? Sail the star lanes until the Alliance hunts us down and kill us...or...”

“Or?”

“Or be the consort of the Queen Amy the First, queen of Pirate-world.”

“Oh I'd much rather be Consort,” Stella's hand slid across Amy's stomach and down between her legs, “now put down that pad and come and give your 'consort' the attention she deserves...”

The End.


End file.
